Why Doesn’t Thomas Massie just run as an Independent for KY-04?
So as it stands Thomas Massie lost his KY-04 primary to Ed Gallrein by roughly 10k votes. The election is a closed primary so there are no independents who would have been able to vote, but it’s very likely Massie would have performed very well with Independents although likely not enough to win the primary.
But a general election seems like a whole different story. If Massie were to run he would likely bring a large portion of the primary voters he already got plus a good chunk of independents, and I would venture to say that he could probably peel away a large chunk of Democrats voters who would reward him for being willing to cross party lines against the GOP and would rather give him their vote to remain a check on Trump instead of voting for the Democrat who has no real chance to win the race in a strongly Red district.
So why doesn’t he just run as an Independent for the seat? Aside from his potential 2028 ambitions am i oversimplifying this in my head to think he would have a realistic shot at winning his current seat as an Independent?