A group of Republican leaders in the Fifth District has sent a letter to ex-president Donald Trump asking him to reconsider his endorsement of State Sen. John McGuire in the June 18 congressional primary.
The group, led by Rick Buchanan, the chair of the Fifth District Republican Congressional Committee, wants Trump to back the incumbent, Bob Good, who Trump dismissed last week as “bad for Virginia, bad for the USA.”
“Bob has demonstrated bold and courageous leadership with his exhaustive offense against the progressive left Democrat agenda,” the group wrote in its letter.
It’s hard to argue with the premise. Good, in his second term in Congress, is the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, an ideological group that works to drag the rest of the Republican Party even further to the far right politically, and he has a 100 percent voter rating from such extremist groups as Heritage Action for America, Family Research Council, Americans for Prosperity and Numbers USA.
Good’s mistake was endorsing Florida Gov. Ron Desantis for president last year. After Desantis dropped out of the race in February, leaders in TrumpWorld started signaling to Good that he was persona non grata.
In addition to Trump endorsing McGuire, the Trump campaign served the Good campaign with a cease-and-desist letter last week to have him take down campaign signs featuring Trump’s name.
The letter, sent a day after Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts in a New York City fraud trial, informed the Good campaign that “producing and displaying materials that give the false impression that President Trump is supportive of your candidacy is a fraud on the voters of the 5th Congressional District.”
The letter from Fifth District Republican leaders took aim at McGuire, who was elected to the State Senate last November, saying McGuire “has a history of lying to the voters and only representing his own ambitions rather than the needs of his constituents,” and blasting him for “relying on millions of dollars from outside Virginia to support his candidacy.”
“We hope President Trump reconsiders his ill-advised endorsement and stands with the Grassroots America First supporters of Congressman Bob Good,” the letter concluded.
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Chris Graham
