Good news, not for Bob Good, necessarily, but Republican Party of Virginia chairman Rich Anderson assured us, in a statement issued Monday night, that the Fifth District GOP primary, won by John McGuire, was on the up-and-up.
“The Fifth Congressional District Republican Primary Election has now concluded, and I congratulate State Sen. John McGuire on being the Republican nominee. Further, I thank Congressman Bob Good for his service to the Commonwealth and country,” said Anderson, acknowledging the 375-vote primary victory for McGuire, a state senator endorsed by disgraced ex-president Donald Trump, over Good, the sitting congressman who ran afoul of Trump after endorsing Ron DeSantis for president last year.
Good, for his part, is still clinging to the hope that an issue with a ballot box in a Lynchburg precinct will somehow give him another chance, which, no.
The margin between McGuire and Good is six-tenths of a percentage point, which falls within the one-point cutoff under state law under which Good can request a recount, though his campaign would have to pay for the recount, since the margin is greater than half a point.
You can bet that will be what’s next in the Fifth, a relatively safe Republican district that Good, in his first run for the seat, won in 2020 by a five-point margin over Democrat Cameron Webb, and his predecessor, Denver Riggleman, won in 2018 by 6.6-point margin over Democrat Leslie Cockburn.
The district did have a brief two-year spell in which a Democrat held its congressional seat. Tom Perriello upset long-time Republican incumbent Virgil Goode in the 2008 cycle, before losing his first re-election bid in 2010 to Robert Hurt by a 3.8-point margin.
The Democratic Party nominee in the 2024 cycle is Gloria Tinsley Witt, an Amherst native, businesswoman and civic leader in Lynchburg.
Witt won the nomination in a quiet-as-a-church-mouse three-candidate primary that drew just shy of 13,000 votes, less than a quarter of the number that voted in the Good-McGuire race.
Witt lapped the field in her race, though, garnering 61.4 percent of the vote.
No questions about the legitimacy of the counting on that side, no sir.
It’s Republicans, led by Trump, who even cast doubt on the count in his 2016 win over Hillary Clinton, who like to claim that elections are rigged.
Good is still dropping hints in that direction. Anderson, the party chair, is trying, for now, to put his foot down.
“As this process and the General Election move forward, we can all have confidence that the commonsense appointments to the Virginia Department of Elections and State Board of Elections over the last three years, along with Virginia’s exclusive use of paper ballots, will keep our elections secure. The major reforms put in place by Gov. Youngkin will ensure that Virginia elections are safe, secure, and reliable,” Anderson said.
Until Biden wins in November, anyway.
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Chris Graham
