Following the longest teacher strike in West Virginia’s history, the state’s educators won a 5 percent pay raise. The much-needed hike lifted spirits and helped spark walkouts around the country, but the larger political implications of the increase in teacher activism are still unclear. Are lawmakers who opposed the teacher movement going to pay a political price? Will politicians who stood with them be rewarded? Republican state Sen. Robert Karnes thought he knew the answer to that. He’s a longtime political foe of the state’s unions — he once referred to union members who were assembled in the legislative gallery as “free riders” as he advocated for right-to-work legislation. During the teacher strike, he had complained that they were holding kids “hostage.” In late March, he told a local newspaper that he couldn’t imagine there would be much political fallout from the strikes. “I can’t say that it will have zero effect, but I don’t think it’ll have any significant effect because, more often than not, they probably weren’t voting on the Republican side of the aisle anyways,” he said of the state’s teachers. On Tuesday, they did just that. And Karnes lost re-election. Labor activists, it turns out, know how to get involved on the Republican side of the aisle, too. Karnes was facing a primary challenge from fellow Republican Delegate Bill Hamilton, who beat him, with all the votes counted, 5,787 to 3,749. It was a blowout.

Hamilton is a moderate Republican who opposes right-to-work and was sympathetic to the teacher strikes, breaking with those in his party who wanted to offer only a smaller raise. Unions responded by heavily investing in his campaign; he raised over $10,000 of his $53,850 haul from organized labor. Karnes poked fun at this support base with tweets sent out just hours before he was officially defeated:

Good thing we are short on socialists in Upshur. https://t.co/spdocXwQYQ — Robert Karnes (@SenatorKarnes) May 8, 2018

Could be a lot of hanging chads tonight. Most of Bill's supporters have never seen a Republican ballot. — Robert Karnes (@SenatorKarnes) May 8, 2018