This constellation of conservative groups has a single message for voters: Their congresswoman, they say, has “gone Washington.” They take firm issue with Ellmers’s vote to renew the Export-Import Bank and her support for the 2016 budget and allege that she is too close to the House GOP leadership.

“Renee Ellmers, in 2009 and 2010, she came to AFP events and touted her conservative values,” said AFP president Tim Phillips. “And she hasn’t kept her word on that.”

Ellmers acknowledges she has “become this poster child” for conservative fury and argues that’s because she refuses to do the bidding of special interests in Washington.

“Apparently [it’s] because I’m not beholden to any of them. I’m not beholden to my House Republican leadership. I am not beholden to the special interest groups,” she said in an interview before a town hall here last week. “I absolutely refuse to feel the pressure they put on other members to vote the way they want them to vote. I don’t care about the scorecards that they keep. And because I have been so vocal about it, I believe this is the reason they’re coming at me. Because I have been pointing out what so many others are too afraid to say, which is that special interest groups want to control members of Congress.”