Such is the state of affairs in the Republican Party in the heat of primary season: A politician who’s been in Washington for a little over three years is distancing himself from the party’s leadership in Congress to fend off a strong challenge from a pair of self-styled conservative outsiders. A similar dynamic is playing out in Indiana, another state key to the GOP’s hopes of keeping or expanding its slim, 51 to 49 majority in the Senate. In the race to challenge Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly, two Republican congressmen, Representatives Luke Messer and Todd Rokita, could lose out to a businessman, Mike Braun, who’s painted them both as creatures of the D.C. swamp.

Both primaries, slated for Tuesday, could provide clues as to just how toxic incumbency still is for a party that in recent years has repeatedly rewarded political renegades over insiders. And once again, GOP leaders in Washington fear that the party base’s preference for untested outsiders could damage its chances in the fall.

It’s not that Jenkins, Messer, and Rokita are grizzled veterans who have lost touch with their home states—the three of them have fewer than 10 terms among them in Congress. But as Roy Moore’s defeat of then-Senator Luther Strange in last year’s Alabama primary showed, even the briefest whiff of incumbency and establishment ties can be a liability in today’s GOP.

Of the two races that will be decided on Tuesday, the more volatile one is in West Virginia. Republicans who are aligned with McConnell have worried that Blankenship’s unlikely strength—he recently spent a year in federal prison—could be a repeat of their nightmare scenario last fall with Moore, the former Alabama chief judge whose relationships with teenage girls led to his loss of a safe Republican Senate seat in December.

Blankenship, who as CEO of Massey Energy pleaded guilty in connection with a mining disaster that killed 29 people in 2010, has gone after McConnell relentlessly. He charged that the majority leader had “conflicts of interest” in China because of his wife’s family heritage, and he gave McConnell the nickname “Cocaine Mitch,” a reference to a 2014 report that drugs were found aboard a ship owned by Chao’s parents. At the Fox News debate last week, organizers blocked him from taking the stage while wearing a red baseball cap emblazoned with the words, “Ditch Mitch.” And to top it off, on Thursday Blankenship released an ad assailing McConnell’s “China family.” “Swamp Captain Mitch McConnell has created millions of jobs for China people,” Blankenship says in the ad. “While doing so, Mitch has gotten rich. In fact, his China family has given him tens of millions of dollars.”

Blankenship appeared to be fading in the closing weeks. Morrisey scored endorsements from conservatives like Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, along with anti-abortion groups in West Virginia. And a Fox News poll of the race conducted late last month placed Blankenship in third place with 16 percent versus 25 percent for Jenkins and 21 percent for Morrisey. President Trump hasn’t endorsed in the race, but on Monday he urged West Virginia Republicans to vote either for Jenkins or Morrisey. “Remember Alabama,” the president warned. Blankenship, he tweeted, “can’t win the general election in your state.” Trump’s decision to wade into the primary at the last minute followed reports this weekend in Politico and Axios that GOP officials in Washington were growing concerned that Blankenship had regained strength after a week’s worth of attention on his comments about McConnell.