This never happened to Karl Rove.

Brad Parscale, the man who was recently given the reins to President Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign, was handed a stinging and absolute defeat in a much smaller political arena Tuesday night, when the candidate he personally backed for Texas's 21st congressional seat finished sixth in a crowded Republican primary.



The candidate, Robert Stovall, has close ties to Parscale, whom he hired to design his campaign website when he ran for Bexar County tax assessor-collector in 2012. Stovall also recently appointed Parscale's father as vice chairman of the county's Republican Party, and his son has worked for Parscale's firm.



Parscale has rapidly ascended to larger and higher-profile jobs, working as the data and digital director for Trump's 2016 campaign and now as the president's campaign manager going into 2020. But he took an outsize interest in Stovall's 2018 bid, telling the San Antonio Express-News that it would "probably be the only race in the country that I will personally support."

That foray into local politics floundered miserably Tuesday, with Stovall ending up in sixth place in a crowded field of 18 Republican candidates, with just 4.8% of the vote. Parscale's father, who was also on the ballot Tuesday, was similarly defeated, taking third in the race for Bexar County Republican Party chairman.

Parscale, in a brief exchange Wednesday morning with BuzzFeed News, said he never ended up assisting Stovall’s bid and that the extent of his work for his father’s campaign was one robocall.

According to Federal Election Commission data, however, Parscale's firm, Parscale Digital, was paid $2,137.94 by Stovall's campaign on Jan. 12 for digital design and marketing services.

Stovall, a former chairman of Bexar County's Republican Party, was a staunch Trump supporter who, in a primary campaign ad, wore a distinctive white baseball cap with the president's signature “Make America Great Again” motto in gold lettering.



Standing in swamp water that reached above his knees, Stovall explained in the ad that he was running for Congress "to help President Trump get rid of the establishment politicians that have failed to support his agenda."