Finally, the dirty tricks portion of the Republican primary for Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District seat has arrived.
And, frankly, the claims and innuendo being directed at the incumbent, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-SomewhereorotherLewisCounty, just don’t measure up to the shenanigans perfected by Donald Segretti in behalf of Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President in 1972 – but it’ll have to do in these sad political times.
First, the Cliff Notes:
Massie, a libertarian maverick seeking re-election to a Northern Kentucky district that snakes along the Ohio River, has attracted the ire of President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump for sins both real and imagined. Trump and his henchmen found a stooge to oppose Massie in the almost-here May 19 primary, a fellow named Ed Gallrein who couldn’t even win a recent state senate primary set up like a row of dominoes for him, and the Trump gang is spending a zillion dollars to carry the stooge across the finish line.
And they might just succeed. In a hotly competitive race like this, the dirty tricks, also known as rat____g in political lingo, are soon to follow. So it goes.
Massie’s first wife, Rhonda, his high school sweetheart, sadly died unexpectedly from a respiratory ailment on June 27, 2024. A few months later, sometime in September according to the Cincinnati Enquirer and other sources, he began a relationship with a Florida woman, Cynthia West, who, for some inexplicable reason, recently decided to make and issue a video regarding her romance with the congressman.
How nice.
Anyway, in this interview, conducted by Erlanger attorney Marcus Carey (who, coincidently, lost a GOP primary campaign to Massie in 2012), West claimed the relationship quickly turned “very intense, very romantic.’’ They travelled around a bit, including a visit to South Africa, and she agreed to relocate to Washington DC, with Massie advising her a job was available in the office of Rep. Victoria Spartz, which she obtained.
From there, things fell apart. West and Massie broke up sometime in January 2025, with West telling Carey she ended it when Massie asked her to “engage in behavior that I just, I wasn’t comfortable.”
What did Massie do, ask her to kill the Department of Education?
After the love birds parted company, West was either fired or, as claimed in a statement issued by Spartz office, “her temporary employment was not extended beyond 90 days due to concerning conduct by Ms. West.’’
Regardless, West filed a wrongful termination action and cited Massie as a witness. He then, according to West, for some reason, offered her $5,000 to drop the complaint.
Subsequently, according to Fox News, the Office of Congressional Ethics offered West $60,000 to settle her claim against Spartz. She rejected the offer “because it included a non-disclosure agreement that would bar her from publicly discussing the allegations.’’
“I’ve spent so much time fighting for transparency and justice, accountability, that if I did this, then I would call into question my own integrity,” West told Carey. “I wouldn’t be able to sit with that, so I can’t do it.”
As a coda to this, you might want to know, after the break-up, Massie began seeing Carolyn Grace Moffa, a former staffer in the office of Sen. Rand Paul, and the couple married on Oct. 19, 2025.
Trump, as is his malevolent wont, mocked the nuptials.
Now, let it be said, I have never been a Thomas Harold Massie fanboy. Never will be. His views on guns are atrocious and dangerous and his recent campaign ad calling supporters of trans rights “creeps’’ is the most disgusting message of the entire campaign, competing with the infamous “White People’’ ad of Rep. Andy Barr in his race for the Senate, as the worst of the political year. Both of those endeavors would be disqualifying in a better world.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but this pay-off matter seems like pretty thin gruel. In fact, the gruel doesn’t exist. What you are left with here is boy meets girl, boy helps girl get a job, boy and girl break up, boy offers to give girl $5,000 for – who knows why?
West claims the dough was to drop the complaint against Spartz’s office. What is the possible rationale for Massie giving someone $5,000 out of his own pocket to keep her from talking about getting fired from someone else’s office? And, if he did so, what law or ethics standard has been violated?
I suppose the inference is Massie had West fired from the Spartz office after the break up and handing her some cash would save him from testifying and acknowledging his involvement. That scenario is simply not in evidence.
For the record, in an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, Massie said the parting was a mutual decision. He did, indeed, give her $5,000, perhaps more, to cover her expenses for moving to Washington and because her estranged husband was not providing financial support. That all came before the Spartz job.
Massie insists he never offered her “hush money.’’ But there was never really anything to keep hush about.
“It’s sad that a week before this election people are making false and unsubstantiated allegations about me in an obvious attempt to influence the outcome of this election,” Massie said in a statement. “All of the claims of inappropriate conduct are false.”
Now, what might induce a former girlfriend to get in touch with a one-time political rival of said former boyfriend and create a video about that doomed relationship one week before the ex-boyfriend, the Wonder Boy, Thomas Massie, was due to participate in the country’s most closely watched political primary? West maintains she has maintained no contact with the Gallrein campaign or the Trump administration. She said she is motivated because “I’ve spent so much time fighting for transparency and justice and accountability … ’’
Okay, but may I suggest that someone keep a close eye on Ms. West’s future employment opportunities.
Trump’s animus toward Massie is of long standing, although Massie supports nearly all of the president-cum-dictator’s policy initiatives. He has parted company with the White House over the war in Iran and the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill that cut taxes but added trillions to the national debt, an issue Massie concentrates on.
And, of course, there is the Jeffrey Epstein incident, with Massie going to the mat to force the disclosure of investigative records regarding Epstein’s sex trafficking of minors – details that Trump, who at one time was palsy-walsy with the pervert, initially sought to conceal.
In early March, Trump visited Northern Kentucky for a rally in Gallrein’s behalf, asserting that Massie, a fellow Republican, is “the worst person.’’
Massie, Trump said, is “disloyal to the Republican Party. He’s disloyal to the people of Kentucky, and most importantly, he is disloyal to the United States of America. And he’s got to be voted out of office as soon as possible.”
That may be happening. Trump and his allied groups have poured a reported $14 million into the campaign badmouthing Massie throughout the region, rendering it the most expensive primary election in the nation’s history. For his part, Massie and supporting groups have kicked in about $11 million. Quantus Insights, a polling firm generally thought to have a Democratic bias, reported Massie with a nine-point lead among likely voters in a survey taken April 6-7. That same firm in a survey taken May 11-12, gives Gallrein an eight-point lead.
Go figure.
The race is vital to both Massie and Trump. Massie hopes to attract affirmation for his independence. Trump wants to show he maintains a chokehold on his MAGA cult.
Stay tuned.
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Written by Bill Straub, a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. Cross-posted from the NKY Tribune.
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