The Republican side in the Fifth District has been just plain odd for several years now, so, it should be no surprise that there’s another intraparty contest for the congressional nomination this year.
And like the last one, in 2024, this one is MAGA vs. MAGA.
“They spent $10 million and needed a recount to beat Good by only 366 votes to barely drag my opponent through the last brutal primary. This time there’s no swamp money big enough to hide McGuire’s record now,” said Melanie Lucero, who is challenging John McGuire for the GOP nomination in the Fifth, in a post on her campaign’s Facebook page posted on Friday.
Lucero is a former U.S. Marine and intelligence analyst who now heads up a Lake Anna-based real-estate company – and unabashed MAGA, who rails on social media and elsewhere about immigration, guns, fraud, and her opponent.
“We keep electing people whose only political skill is surviving elections instead of solving problems and governing. That’s why nothing changes or gets better,” Lucero wrote in another Facebook post, another dig at McGuire, who was elected in 2024 after getting the backing of Donald Trump in his primary challenge to incumbent Bob Good.
Good, himself among the more MAGA-ier of MAGAs on the planet, had committed the unpardonable sin in Trumpworld – he endorsed Ron DeSantis in the 2025 presidential cycle.
But then, there was some sense of karma to him being knocked out by another Republican – in 2020, Good challenged incumbent Republican Denver Riggleman, who was then in the midst of his first term in Congress, and upset him in a party primary, by running to the right of Riggleman.
Riggleman had won in 2018 after Tom Garrett, who was first elected in 2016, decided against running for re-election amid a series of scandals.
Garrett’s single term came after the three-term run in the Fifth District of Robert Hurt, who defeated one-term Democrat Tom Perriello in 2010, then decided against running for a fourth term in the 2016 cycle, opting instead to become the founding director of the Liberty University Center for Law and Government.
Some congressional seats have one guy or gal in place for decades; not the Fifth.
Among the points that Lucero makes about McGuire is one that I make regarding the Sixth District MAGA Congressman, Ben Cline, about the lack of legislative accomplishment for the people back home.
“Career politicians are a joke. This guy has been a politician for over eight years, and in his entire time, he’s only passed one bill. Everything that we get from him is all smoke and mirrors,” Lucero said.
McGuire has to be the favorite in the primary, unless Lucero can convince somebody in Trumpworld to throw a presidential endorsement her way.
Stranger things have happened – Lucero is young, 36, attractive, which is an important quality in Trumpworld, definitely deferential.
The primary is Aug. 4, with early voting getting under way on June 19.
Let the Trump ass kissing begin, basically.
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Chris Graham
