Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s lead in his primary later this month is slipping and he is in genuine danger of losing his Kentucky seat, according to interviews with local GOP officials.

Massie — best known for his defiance of President Donald Trump and advocacy for the release of files associated with notorious sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein — is believed to still have a small edge in his race against military veteran Ed Gallrein, they say. But his lead is shrinking under an onslaught of negative ads and steadfast opposition from a bloc of older Republicans who remain fiercely loyal to the president.

“I think Ed could win,” said Rich Hidy, chairman of the Campbell County GOP in the commonwealth’s 4th Congressional District, who is neutral in the race. “It’s going to be the closest race that Thomas has faced.”

Republicans in the district broadly share Hidy’s view: Many believed Massie’s lead had already shrunk to the single digits when May began.

Massie’s path looks even more complicated this week after primaries in Indiana, where Trump-backed candidates defeated a majority of the Republican incumbents they faced in state Senate elections. Those incumbents had earned Trump’s wrath after voting against his preferred redistricting map.

That anger hardly matches the president’s rage at Massie: Trump vowed to defeat Massie last year after the congressman opposed a series of the president’s policy priorities, endorsing Gallrein and dispatching some of his top political lieutenants to ensure the incumbent’s loss.

“Hey @RepThomasMassie ….you are next,” former Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita posted on X on Tuesday, shortly after votes had been tabulated in Indiana.

Some of the congressman’s supporters openly worry that the millions of dollars spent by anti-Massie super PACs, including one tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, have had a real effect on voters.

“I think that the people who watch TV are seeing the ads, seeing the money spent, and they’re buying into it,” said Steve Doan, a state lawmaker in Kentucky and Massie supporter.

Doan emphasized that he still thinks Massie will win but acknowledged the incumbent’s lead has “narrowed” ahead of the May 19 primary.

Steve Frank, a Gallrein supporter who said earlier this year that he thought Massie would eventually win, said there has been a “change on the ground” in recent weeks.

“It’s not a two-foot putt for Gallrein, but the odds have changed,” said Frank, a former city commissioner in Covington, Kentucky. “Especially after watching the Indiana and Ohio results. Trump has coattails.”

Ohio also held its primary Tuesday, and a host of Trump-backed GOP candidates won their primaries.

Polling from Gallrein’s campaign shows that among voters with an opinion of both Massie and the challenger, Gallrein leads. That has led some Gallrein supporters to conclude that voters overall will move against Massie in the race’s final weeks, as the last slice of the electorate tunes in and decides to side with Trump.

“What the campaign sees in internal numbers confirms what has long been suspected in this race,” said Michael Antonopoulos, an adviser to Gallrein’s campaign. “People are tired of having someone who fights against President Trump instead of working with him. Folks are sick of Thomas Massie’s massive ego, which causes him to combat President Trump at every turn and oppose things that would benefit the people of Kentucky’s 4th District.”

Officials with Massie’s campaign had said for months that they expected the race to tighten at the end, especially as outside groups increased their spending against him. The congressman will win, they say, because he puts his constituents first while still working hand-in-hand with Trump most of the time.

“I will win this race because my constituents know I am consistently America First,” Massie said in a statement. “I backed the SAVE Act, voted to secure the border by funding the wall and DHS, and I will never stop fighting to drain the Swamp. Whether on the campaign trail or in Congress, I don’t hide from my record, I show up, I explain my votes, and I answer directly to the people I represent.”

His supporters also reject comparisons to the Indiana results, saying Massie is much better funded and known than those state lawmakers. More than $23 million has been spent in the 4th District race, according to data from AdImpact, split roughly equally between the two candidates and their outside group allies.

But the increasingly tight race is still an unwelcome surprise to some Massie supporters — and in sharp contrast with the more jubilant mood around the campaign in February, when the congressman, speaking at a rally, touted an internal poll from his campaign that he said showed him up 17 points.

But a personal visit from Trump last month — during which he brought Gallrein on stage — and millions of dollars more in spending against Massie have changed the mood.

“I was having a conversation with a guy and we both joked, ‘I guess we’ll be in the camps together,’” Doan said. “It’s just crazy. It’s disheartening to see somebody who stands on principle and is trying to do government the right way. And he’s just getting whacked in every way, en masse.”

Doan said he was especially frustrated after a recent conversation with one voter who asked if Massie was actually having a three-way affair with Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as was falsely suggested in a recent satirical ad (from the anti-Massie super PAC MAGA KY) created using artificial intelligence.

Massie and his supporters have called his primary one of the year’s most important elections, one that — if he won — could show other Republican lawmakers that it was OK to defy Trump as long as they thought they were acting in their constituents’ interests. Massie himself has both mocked the president’s animosity toward his candidacy and, in interviews and campaign ads, touted his frequent support for Trump’s policies.

Gallrein has shown no such equivocation toward the president, describing his entire candidacy as an effort to give the president more support in Congress.

The owner of a well-known local farm, Gallrein has become known for traveling to every campaign event with a red MAGA hat that the president signed when the two men met in the Oval Office last year, a sign of Trump’s endorsement.