Bob Good, not surprisingly, comes up short in Fifth District primary recount

Bob Good is on the hook for $96,000 for the recount in the Fifth District Republican primary completed on Thursday, but good news, he gained four votes on John McGuire, so it wasn’t all in vain.

The four-vote gain in the recount, unfortunately for Good, wasn’t nearly enough to overturn McGuire’s June 18 victory.

And so it is that Good, who drew the ire of TrumpWorld after his failed endorsement of Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primary, is now officially done politically.

“This recount reaffirmed what we already knew from the June 18th primary. It really is amazing what we can achieve when we work as a team,” McGuire said in a statement after the recount.

McGuire will be a heavy favorite in the November general election in the Fifth District, which gave Donald Trump an 8.5-point margin in the 2020 presidential race.

Fifth District primary

• 

  Republican Party of Virginia acknowledges John McGuire as Fifth District nominee

• Bob Good, after losing Fifth District Republican primary, wants a ‘do-over’
• Developing: Either John McGuire or Bob Good is going to be saying the other guy stole it
• House Freedom Caucus member backs John McGuire over Bob Good in Fifth District race
• Bob Good, in political danger, is still trying to suck up to Donald Trump
• Bob Good picks up the crucial endorsement of Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz
• Fifth District Republicans to Trump: Back Bob Good, not the guy with a ‘history of lying’
• Donald Trump: Bob Good ‘bad for Virginia, bad for the USA,’ endorses John McGuire
• Bob Good skips work to join Republican chorus helping Trump get around gag order
• Congressman Bob Good got kicked out of Donald Trump store opening in Farmville

It’s a mighty quick fall for Good, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, who had undertaken an insurgent effort, in 2020, along the lines of what McGuire did this year, to unseat Denver Riggleman from the Fifth District seat.

It seemed it would be smooth sailing from there for Good, until his move last year to endorse DeSantis, who didn’t even make it to New Hampshire before dropping out of the race.

The receipt from Trump on the DeSantis endorsement was the ex-president’s endorsement of McGuire, in which Trump called Good “bad for Virginia, bad for the USA.”

That made an already tough fight for Good that much tougher, giving McGuire a tailwind that pushed him just ahead at the tape on Primary Night.

It was a given that a close race between Good and McGuire, both election-deniers, in the style of Trump, would come down to weeks of uncertainty ahead of a recount.

Good, in the days leading up to the recount, took to social media to muse aloud about Democrats taking advantage of Virginia’s open primaries to vote for McGuire, make unfounded claims about unsecured voter drop boxes and accuse the McGuire side of campaign finance violations.

Now his focus is on his five months left as a lame-duck second-term back-bencher.

“I will continue to serve my constituents to the best of my ability over the remaining five months of my term, and I will continue to fight for the principles and values upon which our nation was founded,” Good said in a statement on social media after the recount. “I want to once again thank the people of Virginia’s Fifth District for the privilege of being your congressman. May God bless you, and may God continue to bless America.”