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Less than two months before the June 18 primary elections, Rep. Bob Good, R-Campbell County, the incumbent, continues to enjoy the backing of local party leadership, despite ongoing attempts by state Sen. John McGuire, R-Goochland County, to make the Republican nomination contest in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District a referendum on which candidate is the most loyal supporter of former President Donald Trump.
McGuire alleges that Good is “working against Trump … and against our party” any chance he gets. “The veterans in Congress that are endorsing me said that he has never been a part of the team, and he is not a team player. Bob is working for Bob, but I’m working to help save America and to help Trump get reelected, I’m busting my butt,” McGuire said in an interview at Richmond’s Capitol Square earlier this month.
But Rick Buchanan, the chairman of the district’s GOP committee, said that he doesn’t believe that even a formal endorsement of McGuire by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — should he offer one — would move the needle much in favor of the ambitious McGuire.
“If you listen to McGuire’s campaign, then yes, [Trump] is the issue, because McGuire has nothing else,” Buchanan said in a recent phone interview. “I’m not seeing where he takes a stance on any real issue, except Bob Good’s no good, and Bob Good is not a Trump supporter, which is a lie. That’s why he’s got the name McLiar.”
McGuire is attempting to carve out a niche to the political right of Good, one of the most conservative congressmen and the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Buchanan said. “There is no position to the right of Bob. McGuire has no place to run, he has no issues that he can stand on that Bob hasn’t already taken a stand on.”
A former U.S. Navy Seal and an early supporter of Trump who attended the rally outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, McGuire alleges that Good has been a divisive politician whose positions in Congress, including his key role in ousting former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year, have damaged the Republican brand.
“A good leader brings us together. Governor [Glenn] Youngkin is a good example of that,” McGuire said in the interview. “It should be about addition and multiplication, but Bob is about division and subtraction. There are less Republicans because of him who are running for local, state and federal office. A good leader needs to grow the party and unite the party, so we can save America.”
Until his election to the state Senate last year, McGuire had served in the House of Delegates since 2018. He represented what was then the 56th District, comprising areas to the north and west of Richmond.
McGuire’s announcement last fall that he would challenge Good, made less than a week after he won his race in the newly created 10th Senate District where he ran unopposed, sparked the ire of many Republicans who had hoped that the lawmaker would make good on his promise to support Good’s reelection bid and not seek the Republican nomination himself.
In a video filmed at a candidates forum for the state Senate race in Fluvanna County in January of last year, which was first reported by the British tabloid Daily Mail, McGuire praises Good’s conservative credentials and vows to back the Republican incumbent in the 2024 election.
“Bob has done a great job, he’s a true conservative, and we need more of them,” McGuire said at the event, responding to a question from Carolyn Ley, a member of the Fluvanna Republican Committee. “And I’m a true conservative, and I think we should work together. My pledge to you, I am running for the Virginia state Senate, and I am going to support Bob Good for reelection.”
Ley said in a text message Monday that she asked McGuire that day whether he was going to run for Congress because she “watched John constantly run” for the next higher office. “I was certain he would do so again,” Ley said.
In the recent interview, McGuire brushed aside credibility concerns that his previous pledges to support Good might have raised. “That was a year and a half ago, at least,” he said.
“Here’s the thing: I support all Republicans. But when I found out that [Good] wasn’t who he said he was, he lost my support. After I won my convention, he begged Trump for an endorsement. And less than a year later, he betrayed Trump when the chips were down,” McGuire said, referring to Good’s endorsement of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last May.
In January, just days after he had taken his oath of office as a state senator, McGuire made national headlines when Cardinal News first reported that Chris LaCivita, the former president’s senior adviser and campaign manager, put Good on notice as payback for his endorsement of DeSantis. “Bob Good won’t be electable when we get done with him,” LaCivita said in a text message at the time. McGuire has since campaigned with Trump in Iowa and met with the former president at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
After DeSantis dropped out later in January, Good released a statement endorsing Trump for president.
“It is my privilege to provide my complete and total endorsement for Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States. President Trump was the greatest President of my lifetime, and we need him to reinstate the policies that were working so well for America,” Good said.
But among Trump’s die-hard supporters, the damage had already been done. In February, Good was kicked out of a new Trump store in Farmville after crashing an event which the owner said she hosted for John McGuire. The incident prompted one of Good’s staffers to call the police over concerns for the congressman’s safety.
“I stood with Trump, and he abandoned him,” McGuire said of Good in the recent interview.
“Bob went with DeSantis and went around the district trashing Trump. Then he calls me a liar, like a machine gun — liar, liar, liar — it’s the funniest thing,”
But Diane Shores, a spokeswoman for Good’s reelection campaign, said in an email that McGuire “has lied to the people of Senate District 10,” and that his lies continue.
“He has run for six seats in seven years, proving that he is a ladder-climbing politician looking for the next big title as a career politician. It’s no secret in Virginia politics that McGuire has wanted to be in Congress since he first ran in District 7 in a nasty race against Nick Freitas in 2020,” Shores said, referring to McGuire’s former Republican colleague in the House of Delegates and one-time primary opponent who recently endorsed Good.
“Then, he filed to run in Congressional District 10, only to realize he was being redistricted into Congressional District 5. He was making phone calls to other members of Congress in 2022 to get support to run against Congressman Good. This was well before any presidential endorsements. Don’t believe Liar John McGuire,” Shores said.
Shores isn’t the only Republican who has tried to portray McGuire as a career politician. Earlier this month, Bill Bolling, who served as lieutenant governor from 2006 until 2014, turned to Facebook, alleging that “McGuire suffers from unbridled political ambition,” which he said can be dangerous.
McGuire’s campaign, Bolling wrote, is “based on the belief that Good committed the unpardonable sin” of choosing to endorse DeSantis over Trump.
“McGuire alleges that Good is a RINO (Republican In Name Only), and should be ousted from Congress. This is, of course, a laughable charge, but it is pleasingly ironic since it was Good who leveled the same charge against his predecessor, former Rep. Denver Riggleman, who Good ousted in a similar Republican primary in 2020.”
But in his post, Bolling didn’t have much love for Good either, labeling him one of the “most conservative, ideologically rigid, and disruptive” members of Congress. “Honestly, this is not a contest between good guys and bad guys. These are all bad guys, who represent what is wrong with the Republican Party,” Bolling wrote.
In today’s GOP it is no longer enough to be a consistent conservative Republican who understands the realities of political life in a divided Congress, Bolling concluded.
“To be acceptable to many within the Republican base, you must be an uncompromising right-wing ideologue who refuses to seek common ground on almost anything; and in the case of McGuire and his kind, you must also be a devoted member of the Trump cult.”
But if endorsements from the far-right fraction of the Republican Party are an indicator, McGuire has proven that he has mounted a serious challenge to Good by rounding up support from many key players in Trump’s orbit, including the former president’s ex-attorney Rudy Giuliani, and firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who first endorsed McGuire in a Facebook post in January.
“John McGuire is a Navy SEAL who has stood with President Donald J. Trump since he came down the escalator. He’s a proven warrior with a STRONG conservative voting record as a Virginia state delegate and state senator,” Greene wrote in the post.
“Bob Good is an angry, disloyal, MAGA traitor who was caught on camera trashing President Trump and doing everything he could to defeat President Trump. Bob Good is NO GOOD and cannot be trusted.”
Earlier this month, McGuire’s campaign announced that Greene would join him at several campaign stops in the 5th District earlier this month, until critical votes on Capitol Hill forced her to cancel her trip to Virginia.
In the state legislature, McGuire also received the endorsement of Del. Wren Williams, R-Patrick County, who in late 2020 was part of Trump’s legal team working to overturn the election results in Wisconsin.
“We need principled leaders in Washington who will not sacrifice our values for political expediency,” Williams said in a statement. “When President Trump gets re-elected in November, he is going to need strong supporters in Congress who will help him pass our America First agenda. I am confident John McGuire will be that leader in Washington who will support President Trump’s agenda.”
Good, however, received endorsements from Freitas, the Republican delegate from Culpeper, and Del. Tom Garrett, R-Buckingham County, a former congressman who represented the 5th District from 2017 until 2019.
“I don’t have anything bad to say about Senator McGuire,” Garrett said in a brief interview in Richmond. “I just feel like Congressman Good is doing a good job representing the district and the values of the district. I think we need him in Washington, and we are going to try to keep him there.”
Mark Rozell, a political scientist at the Schar School of Policy and Government of George Mason University, said that both Good and McGuire are running with one strike against them each — Good endorsing DeSantis instead of Trump, and McGuire for violating his promise to fulfill his state Senate term.
“In a GOP primary, the charge of being anti-Trump may be a more powerful negative than that of being too ambitious. Nonetheless, Good has the traditional advantages of incumbency that give him some protection, as he can extol his solid conservative voting record in Congress,” Rozell said. “It really has become a contest of personalities over policy, as the issue positions of the candidates are not much different.”
Despite McGuire’s frequent claims of having the upper hand in the money race — in an email newsletter from April 16 he claimed that “McGuire outraises Good AGAIN!” — the incumbent from Campbell County has kept flush campaign coffers.
As of March 31, the most recent reporting deadline, Good reported having raised $855,792, giving him a significant lead over McGuire, who reported $502,747, although the numbers appear somewhat murky.
Shores, Good’s campaign spokeswoman, said she wasn’t worried that the congressman’s campaign would run out of money or steam before the primary election.
“We have an amazing ground game evidenced by the number of volunteers and attendees to our last three-day Freedom Fighters Tour, where over 1,000 people attended the events,” Shores said. “Our opponent is raking in the McCarthy swamp bucks to continue the lies and attacks against Bob Good. We will never be outworked, and we appreciate every dollar coming in from across our district to hold this seat.”
Buchanan, the chairman of the 5th District GOP, said that while he doesn’t believe McGuire is going to win, he is still concerned with “big money coming into the district” in the coming weeks.
“The negative ads are going to get worse and more frequent. It’s not just the money that John has raised, it’s the PACs, and the other groups that are coming in here that are trying to sell a narrative to the people,” Buchanan said. “That’s the concern that people like me have, that there will be a situation where McGuire gets close. I don’t see him doing that, but that’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”
But McGuire, Buchanan added, has little to no support from the 24 Republican units in the district.
“The committees are pretty much united behind Bob,” he said. “When somebody who is campaigning says that he is not going to run against Bob, and that Bob is a very good conservative congressman, and then turns around before he even gets sworn in to the state Senate and declares his candidacy against Bob, he’s pretty much set the stage for himself with the committees.”
Buchanan added he doesn’t believe that the nomination method in this year’s primary season — a state-run primary election on June 18 — will give either candidate an advantage, despite Good’s record of winning the Republican nomination twice at a party-run convention.
“I don’t see it helping or hurting, but we would much rather have a convention, for the very reason that we are Republicans, we can actually have Republicans say who our Republican candidates are,” Buchanan said.
However, a new law, which requires political parties to make accommodations for absentee voters to avoid suppressing turnout during their nomination contests, makes conventions or so-called firehouse primaries a near impossibility, leaving the statewide primary election as the sole choice.
Whether Trump’s support for McGuire will be enough to push him over the finish line and oust an incumbent congressman with strong conservative principles remains to be seen. LaCivita, Trump’s senior adviser and campaign manager, did not respond to a message on Monday asking if Trump planned to formally endorse McGuire.
“I don’t think that a Trump endorsement would be relevant to the people that I know,” Buchanan, the GOP chair in the 5th District, said. “But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t change the minds of some people.”
