After Ukraine Aid Vote, Republicans Braced for Backlash Find Little

Some Republicans who backed the aid encountered little resistance from voters, who were far more willing to embrace it — and less interested in ousting the speaker over it — than their right-wing colleagues.

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The Ukraine aid bill cleared Congress and was signed into law last week.

A week after he broke with the majority of House Republicans and voted to send $60.8 billion in aid to Ukraine, Representative Max Miller took the stage at a performing arts center in his Ohio district bracing for backlash.

Instead, Mr. Miller, a first-term congressman who spent four years in the White House as a top aide to former President Donald J. Trump, was greeted at a town hall-style meeting on Saturday in the city of Solon with a sustained round of applause. Several attendees stood to publicly thank him for his vote, and a line of locals queued up afterward to shake his hand.

“Anything we can do to support the Ukrainian victory over the Russian invasion would be a positive thing for the world,” said Randy Manley, a retiree from Strongsville, Ohio, who said he planned to vote for Mr. Trump in November.

More than 500 miles west, in Iowa City, Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a vulnerable Republican who won her district by six points in 2020, had a similar experience.

Kenneth Kirk, 62, a resident of Newton, Iowa, arrived at a fund-raiser for Ms. Miller-Meeks headlined by Speaker Mike Johnson — who had risked his job to push through the aid — primed to rail against the money for Ukraine.

ImageRepresentative Max Miller, Republican of Ohio, had prepared to defend his vote on the Ukraine aid bill to angry constituents in his district. Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times

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