Representative Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who lost an eye in Afghanistan, has voted in lock step with President Trump’s second-term agenda.
But the fourth-term Republican has condemned Mr. Trump’s election denialism, split with some in his party on immigration and feuded with the right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson. Now, he is trying to fend off an insurgent challenger in Tuesday’s primary. The contest will offer a fresh measure of how much room there is in the MAGA movement for a conservative lawmaker who has at times clashed with the president and his allies.
Mr. Trump has declined to support Mr. Crenshaw, making him the only House Republican in Texas running for re-election without the president’s stamp of approval. It was unclear if Mr. Trump might weigh in on the race in its final days. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The congressman is locked in a feisty battle with State Representative Steve Toth, with each candidate calling the other a “RINO,” a Republican in name only. Mr. Toth has been among the most conservative members of the Texas House, often clashing with Republican leadership over legislation.
Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican strategist who ran Mr. Crenshaw’s first House campaign, said the race has appeared to center heavily on a simple question: “How MAGA are you?”
“Is MAGA just doing whatever the base wants all the time?” said Mr. Steinhauser, who is not involved in the primary this year. “Is MAGA doing what the president wants all the time? I don’t know.”
Mr. Crenshaw, 41, is a cable news regular who once had a short-lived feud with the comedian Pete Davidson. He has showered praise on the president for his decision to order the military operation that captured the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and for his efforts to oppose gender-transition treatment for minors.
But Mr. Toth, 65, says that Mr. Crenshaw betrayed voters by supporting a bipartisan immigration enforcement deal in the waning months of the Biden administration that was opposed by Mr. Trump during the 2024 campaign.
“The No. 1 issue that people had was the affiliation with the Democrats on this bipartisan border deal,” Mr. Toth said in an interview Wednesday, adding that the congressman has failed to “admit that there is any election fraud” and was critical of Mr. Trump after the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (There was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.)
Mr. Crenshaw rejects Mr. Toth’s characterization of his record, and his campaign has run an advertisement saying that Mr. Toth hampered the president’s immigration agenda by opposing border-security funding.
“I’m out there defending Trump in places where Republicans are too scared to go,” Mr. Crenshaw said in an interview Wednesday.
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A day earlier, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, waded into the race to endorse Mr. Toth, calling him a champion of “liberty, limited government, and constitutional governance.”
Some of the trouble for Mr. Crenshaw can be traced to five years ago, when he pushed back on Mr. Trump’s drive to reverse his 2020 election defeat.
After initially questioning the result, Mr. Crenshaw ultimately voted to certify it, dismissing Republicans who denied it as “performance artists” and “grifters.” A week after the Jan. 6 attack, he joined three other Republicans in issuing a statement that condemned Mr. Trump “for the words and actions which contributed” to the violence.
His outspoken support for Ukraine in its war with Russia further alienated him from some conservatives. (On that issue, Mr. Crenshaw has also offered ample praise of Mr. Trump’s leadership recently.)
In the Biden years, he clashed with Mr. Carlson and quarreled with Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, then a congresswoman and staunch Trump supporter. Mr. Crenshaw has the support of Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a co-founder of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.
Some Republicans suggested that Mr. Crenshaw’s pugnacious, social-media heavy style had left him open to a primary challenge. Alex Bruesewitz, a Republican strategist, said Mr. Crenshaw’s “biggest problem has been the fact that he is too combative with right-wing figures, specifically online.”
“He is a congressman,” Mr. Bruesewitz said. “He should act like one.”
Mr. Crenshaw said he understood some did not like his approach.
“I was a SEAL a lot longer than I’ve been a congressman,” said Mr. Crenshaw, who likened his approach to Mr. Trump’s. “I can be gruff. I can be right-to-the-point in a way that people might find insensitive. But in the end, I’m doing the job I’m supposed to be doing, and I’m telling you the truth. You’re not getting a politician.”
Mr. Toth has had his own battles with other Republicans, breaking with many to oppose the 2023 impeachment of the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, a Republican. But he has won the support of Charlie Kirk’s group, Turning Point Action, and the backing of Mr. Carlson, who interviewed Mr. Toth last year on his show.
“It just does seem like the Republican Party shouldn’t have to have a Dan Crenshaw in it,” Mr. Carlson said to Mr. Toth at the time.
Public polling of the primary has been scant. But Mr. Cruz’s endorsement caught political observers off guard, potentially signaling that Mr. Crenshaw might be at risk of defeat — or at least of having to endure a runoff under Texas’s election system, which requires candidates to win an outright majority in primaries. Two long-shot Republicans are also on the ballot.
Redistricting has made Mr. Crenshaw’s district more conservative. No matter the outcome of the primary, there is little question the G.O.P. will keep the seat in November. But the intraparty fight has captured Republicans’ attention in a 630-square-mile expanse of southeastern Texas.
Jim McIngvale, a furniture store owner, local celebrity and Republican donor known around the greater Houston area as “Mattress Mack,” said he had supported Mr. Crenshaw in the past. But this time, Mr. McIngvale said he was going with Mr. Toth, his longtime friend. Mr. McIngvale faulted Mr. Crenshaw for seeming “aloof” during his visits to the district over the years.
“You’ve got to work the crowd,” Mr. McIngvale said. “You’ve got to let people know you’re glad to be there.”
J. David Goodman is the Texas bureau chief for The Times, based in Houston.
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