Michael Alfonso, 26, clinched the Republican nomination for Wisconsin’s Seventh Congressional District on Tuesday in a crowded primary, according to The Associated Press, buoyed by the support of his father-in-law, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and the endorsement of President Trump.
Mr. Alfonso, who has never held office, is likely to face little resistance in November in his quest to represent the same deeply Republican district in rural northern Wisconsin that Mr. Duffy represented for more than eight years. Mr. Trump won the district by at least 20 percentage points in each of the last three presidential elections.
The president in January called Mr. Alfonso a “young STAR” and a “MAGA warrior.” If elected in November, Mr. Alfonso would become the youngest lawmaker in the House. But some local Republican officials have questioned Mr. Alfonso’s lack of experience and Mr. Duffy’s influence on him.
“I think what they’re doing is wrong morally,” Tanner Hiller, chair of the Iron County Republican Party, told Wisconsin Public Radio in May. “There’s a lot of people that have better credentials, that know this district, that will represent this district better than Michael Alfonso.”
Mr. Duffy, who flipped the congressional seat for Republicans and held it from 2011 to 2019, tested his star power by returning to his old district to campaign for Mr. Alfonso. He emptied $1 million from his old congressional campaign account to support Mr. Alfonso’s candidacy. A ProPublica investigation found that Mr. Alfonso had received donations from lobbyists, business executives and PACs connected to industries that Mr. Duffy’s department regulates.
Mr. Duffy, who got his start in public life in 1997 as a cast member of the MTV reality show “The Real World,” featured Mr. Alfonso this year in a YouTube reality series on his family’s “Great American Road Trip.”
Mr. Alfonso was born in northern Wisconsin, graduated from University of Wisconsin, Madison, with a degree in mathematics and married Mr. Duffy’s daughter Evita Duffy when he was 22, according to his campaign’s website. He said he worked for a year as a producer on a podcast hosted by Dan Bongino, a fervent Trump supporter and a former deputy director of the F.B.I.
Mr. Alfonso has said he was inspired to run for office after the assassination last September of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who had galvanized pro-Trump students on college campuses across the country. Turning Point Action, the political organization founded by Mr. Kirk, endorsed Mr. Alfonso for his “unapologetic America First message.”
Other Republican candidates in the race had questioned Mr. Alfonso’s residency in the district. Mr. Alfonso, who was registered to vote in Florida, registered again in Wisconsin shortly before Mr. Trump’s endorsement, according to Wisconsin Public Radio, listing his address as a Wisconsin cabin owned by Mr. Duffy and his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, a Fox anchor.
On Tuesday, Mr. Alfonso defeated Kevin Hermening, a former Marine who was one of the Americans held captive when Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979.
Other candidates in the race included an Ashley Furniture executive and a competitive dog musher.
The Republican megadonors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein backed different candidates in the race. Mr. Uihlein contributed $1 million to Mr. Alfonso’s campaign; Ms. Uihlein contributed $1 million to Jessi Ebben, the Ashley Furniture executive.
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