Peter Meijer, a Republican who voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump when he was a member of the House, has withdrawn from the Republican primary race for U.S. Senate in Michigan, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
The move comes five days before Mr. Trump, who endorsed Mike Rogers for the seat, returns to the battleground state for a rally in Freeland, Mich. Mr. Rogers, who served seven terms in the House and rose to become the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is the most prominent Republican in the race.
The seat is being vacated by Senator Debbie Stabenow, the state’s senior senator and a Democrat, who announced last year that she would not seek a fifth term. That set up a crowded competition to fill the seat, a contest that could decide control of the narrowly divided Senate. Representative Elissa Slotkin is the most prominent Democrat running on the left. The primary is on Aug. 6.
Mr. Meijer did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.
Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and a former longtime House member himself, said in an interview on Friday that there had been rumblings about Mr. Meijer’s exit from the race.
“Peter’s a young guy, got a good résumé, and I think has aspirations in the future and just kind of decided that this was not the year to go the wall,” Mr. Hoekstra said.
Mr. Meijer, the scion of the Meijer supermarket empire and an Army Reserve veteran who served in Iraq, was ousted from his House seat during the 2022 midterm elections by a far-right challenger endorsed by Mr. Trump, after serving just one term in the House. A Democrat, Hillary Scholten, then flipped the seat in the general election that year.
