LEXINGTON — Thomas Massie is not Dalton Henry’s congressman.But the Floridian still stood outside KET on May 4 to show his support at Massie’s appearance.Henry, who traveled hundreds of miles, has followed the race closely, and understands that because Trump has taken aim at Massie by endorsing his opponent, he could be in trouble.“It’s definitely a referendum on whether or not a congressman can be true to his constituents instead of the party,” Henry said of the upcoming primary election.Dalton Henry traveled from Florida to Kentucky to support U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie’s reelection bid. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)Massie later told the Lantern during a festival in his native Lewis County on Saturday that he had heard of people from states such as Florida, Arizona and Michigan, traveling to Kentucky to campaign for him.“Some people are coming in to volunteer, because they feel like — not to be too dramatic about this — but they feel like the future of the country is at stake,” Massie said.The Republican congressman has represented Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District since his election in 2012, but this year, he is facing one of his closest battles yet to retain his seat. In October, after months of slamming the congressman in social media tirades, President Donald Trump endorsed a candidate to run against Massie — Shelby County Republican and former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein.Kentucky Republican voters in the district will decide on Tuesday next week whether to give Massie another term, or replace him with Gallrein. Though there will be a Democratic challenger on the ballot in November, the seat is widely seen as a safe one for the GOP. The 4th Congressional District spans from Appalachian Eastern Kentucky to Louisville suburbs in the west. Metropolitan Northern Kentucky, just under Cincinnati, Ohio, has become an increasingly Libertarian stronghold in recent years.But recent polling suggests the race has tightened considerably, with one independent poll from earlier this week putting Gallrein slightly ahead.One Republican in Gallrein’s home of Shelby County, Judge-Executive Dan Ison, said that this primary election is the “toughest that Massie has had” in his time in Congress, but questioned if “the president did his homework on his endorsed candidate.” Ison supports Trump, he said, “but I do question some of his actions,” and believes other Republican voters do as well.“I think he just wanted somebody to run against Massie,” Ison said of Trump. He later added that he had not met Gallrein until he decided to run for the local state Senate seat in 2024. Despite having Republican Senate leadership support, he lost the three-way primary to now state Sen. Aaron Reed, and also faced then-incumbent Sen. Adrienne Southworth.Ison also questions what issues Gallrein would address if elected to Congress.When asked what bill would he propose if elected to Congress in a Monday telephone interview with the Lantern, Gallrein said his first step in Congress would be to “go up there and build relationships, because (Massie’s) burned every bridge to our district, burned the bridge factory down, ran everybody off that would build a bridge except for the Democrats who hate us.”Earlier on in the interview, Gallrein said that the race has national implications.“If we do not take advantage of this narrow window of opportunity, history is going to punish us, and the way it will do that is through our kids and our grandkids and thereafter,” he said.Gallrein believes the biggest issue in the race is that most voters in the district have repeatedly elected Trump to the White House — a sign that they support his agenda.“In other words, the voice of this district and the voice of the American people was clear,” Gallrein said, adding that Massie “stands against us.”Massie has repeatedly said he largely does vote with Republicans, but he breaks on key issues, which often matter to hard-right voters. For example, he voted last year against Trump’s megabill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, saying at the time it would “significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates.” He also led the charge to release the federal investigation files on convicted sex offender and financier Jeffery Epstein — an idea that Trump campaigned on but cooled to after winning a second term.Massie told the Lantern that he views this race as a referendum on a few things, including those few times he’s voted against the larger Republican agenda.“And I think I’ve got a national following, because people are paying attention,” he said.‘Burned bridges’ Steve Frank, a former vice mayor of Covington, the largest city in Northern Kentucky, told the Lantern that he had donated to Massie in the past, but has since soured on him.“He’s a nice enough guy, but totally ineffective,” Frank said. “That’s my biggest beef with him.