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To win re-election, Mr. King must first defeat three primary challengers, most prominently Randy Feenstra, a state senator who has outraised him with the support of the Republican establishment. Mr. King brought in just $91,000 in the quarter ending in June, compared with Mr. Feenstra’s $140,000.
Money, however, has never mattered much in Mr. King’s re-elections. He has nearly universal name recognition in his district, and, until recently, voters broadly embraced his pugnacious personality and positions on bedrock conservative issues like abortion and gun rights.
Mr. Scholten, who outspent Mr. King nearly four to one in 2018, came within three percentage points of unseating him after the congressman endorsed a candidate for Toronto mayor with neo-Nazi ties and, in an interview with an Austrian publication that surfaced late in the race, seemed to endorse the “Great Replacement,” a conspiracy theory espoused by white supremacists.
In January, in an interview with The New York Times, Mr. King said, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
House Republican leaders removed him from the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees, while Mr. King defended himself by saying his remarks had been taken out of context.
More recently, in town-hall-style events with constituents, he has claimed he did not utter the words as quoted.
Many Democratic politicians issued fresh condemnations of white nationalism over the weekend after at least 29 people were killed in mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, and some placed a portion of the blame on Mr. Trump’s remarks. The authorities said they were investigating the El Paso shooting as a possible hate crime.