Two days after Mr. Kinzinger called for removing Mr. Trump from office following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, 11 members of his family sent him a handwritten two-page letter, saying he was in cahoots with the devils army for making a public break with the president.
Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God! they wrote. You have embarrassed the Kinzinger family name!
The author of the letter was Karen Otto, Mr. Kinzingers cousin, who paid $7 to send it by certified mail to Mr. Kinzingers father to make sure the congressman would see it, which he did. She also sent copies to Republicans across Illinois, including other members of the states congressional delegation. I wanted Adam to be shunned, she said in an interview. A 42-year-old Air National Guard pilot who represents a crescent-shaped district along the Chicagos suburbs, Mr. Kinzinger is at the forefront of the effort to navigate post-Trump politics. He is betting his political career, professional relationships and kinship with a wing of his sprawling family that his partys future lies in disavowing Mr. Trump and the conspiracy theories the former president stoked.
Mr. Kinzinger was one of just three House Republicans who voted both to impeach Mr. Trump and strip Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from her committee posts. During the House impeachment debate, he asked Democrats if he could speak for seven minutes instead of his allotted one, so that he could make a more authoritative and bipartisan argument against the president; the request was denied.
He has taken his case to the national media, becoming a ubiquitous figure on cable television, late-night HBO programming and podcasts. He began a new political action committee with a six-minute video declaring the need to re-format the Republican Party into something resembling an idealized version of George W. Bushs party with an emphasis on lower taxes, hawkish defense and social conservatism without the grievances and conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies have made central to the partys identity.