For more on the June 18 primaries, see our voter guide. On election night, we’ll have live results and analysis.
When the motorcoach wrapped in former President Donald Trump’s likeness and “Take America Back” campaign slogan turned the corner into the parking lot of the Louisa County Office of Elections last Wednesday afternoon, a crowd of about four dozen supporters of Sen. John McGuire, R-Goochland County, erupted in cheers.
For a brief moment, one could have imagined that Trump himself had come to pay a surprise visit to the county of 40,000 in the eastern part of Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, which political observers consider to be ground zero in one of the most viciously fought GOP primary battles nationwide this year — pitting a Trump-endorsed candidate against the chair of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus who orchestrated last year’s ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The primary also is currently the second-most expensive race nationwide when it comes to outside spending, with more than $10 million in total, according to data collected by ProPublica, a nonprofit organization from New York dedicated to investigative journalism.
But instead of the former president, McGuire stepped off the bus, accompanied by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the controversial congresswoman and conspiracy theorist from Georgia. Greene in recent years has risen to become the undisputed star of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, playing second fiddle to only the presumptive Republican presidential nominee himself.
Despite Trump’s physical absence in Louisa that day, it almost felt like he was there, with his name, image and political agenda looming large on the bus, banners and campaign swag as McGuire and Greene shook hands with MAGA backers in the small but enthusiastic crowd.
Just one week earlier, two days before his conviction in New York City on 34 counts of falsifying business records to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, Trump had formally endorsed McGuire in his bid to unseat Rep. Bob Good, R-Campbell County, who had fallen from the former president’s grace after endorsing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president a year ago.
In a video released on his social media platform Truth Social last week, Trump called McGuire “an American hero” who has served as a Navy SEAL.
“John is a highly respected state legislator who is strong on the border, very powerful in defeating the drug cartels, tough on crime and will always defend our always under siege Second Amendment. John is running against Bob Good who is actually bad for Virginia and who will stab you in the back like he did me,” Trump said.
And with the June 18 primary elections just around the corner, McGuire’s well-funded campaign entered the final stretch with the full blessing of the undisputed GOP leader, hoping that his support will push the ambitious state senator from Goochland over the finish line in a district that Trump won with 53% in both 2016 and 2020.
‘Bob Good is a liar’
Wearing a blue dress and waving a miniature American flag, Greene seized the moment to tout McGuire’s MAGA credentials.
“I’m so excited that President Trump has endorsed John McGuire,” she said. “When you have me and President Trump endorsing a candidate, this is the best message that we can send to a district just like yours, that this is the person that you were hoping and praying to elect to send to Washington to fight alongside us.”
Good, who returned to the MAGA fold to endorse Trump after DeSantis ended his campaign in January, is not that man, said Greene, who first publicly expressed her support for McGuire in a Facebook post in January.
“The very day that President Trump was indicted by [District Attorney] Alvin Bragg up in New York, Bob Good stabbed President Trump in the back and endorsed Ron DeSantis against President Trump,” she said. “You talk about kicking somebody when they’re down.”
(In fact, the indictment, the first of a former U.S. president, was approved by a Manhattan grand jury on March 30, 2023, and Good endorsed DeSantis more than five weeks later, on May 9, 2023.)
“Bob Good got elected with President Trump’s endorsement, and we take things like that very seriously,” Greene continued. “When someone does that to our president, everybody pays attention. Bob Good thought no one would notice, but we noticed, and we will not forget.”
In a phone interview Tuesday, Good pushed back against Greene’s allegations, saying that the congresswoman had a “personal vendetta” against him over his role in McCarthy’s ouster last fall, and that she is one of very few top level Republicans supporting McGuire.
“The lady from Georgia is the exception,” Good said. “She is dishonest and lying to [Trump], because she is upset that she made a deal with Kevin McCarthy to support him for speaker, and she’s upset that he is no longer speaker. She was kicked out of the Freedom Caucus, so she has a personal ax to grind, and she is lying to President Trump about me and about this race.”
Good rejected a narrative expressed by some political analysts suggesting that McGuire’s strategy is to attack him from the political right.
“That’s absolutely false, that would be impossible. I am the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, which is clearly the most conservative caucus in the Republican House of Representatives, and the 35 members of the caucus voted me as their chairman because I have been a leader in all the conservative fights,” Good said.
“My opponent has nothing like that that he can point to, he has been all over the place trying to find out what might resonate. He’s never been voted into a leadership position in a caucus or by his peers, and his voting record is not nearly as conservative as mine is. I have stood up to the Republican Party when it’s not been conservative enough.”
Good also boasted his long list of conservative Republican supporters in Washington, D.C., including those close to Trump, such as Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Byron Donalds, R-Fla., and Scott Perry, R-Pa.; former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; and retired Gen. Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser in the Trump administration, among others.
And while McGuire enjoys the support of Trump, Greene, and a handful of MAGA celebrities like Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., who served as the secretary of interior in the previous administration, and former Trump attorney and New York City Mayor Rudy Guliani, Good views it as more important to this primary that he has managed to rally the support of the vast majority of his district’s elected GOP officials.
“The enthusiasm is for us, the local elected officials are for us, the GOP leaders across the district are for us, even every elected official in Goochland, my opponent’s home county, is supporting me, imagine that. Those who know him best like him least,” Good said.
And on Friday, top Republican officials in the 5th District doubled down and in an unprecedented move asked Trump in an open letter to rethink his endorsement of McGuire and to instead consider backing the incumbent.
“Congressman Bob Good has championed America First policies by introducing legislation to codify policies defunding chain migration and requiring that immigrants are self-sufficient,” the letter said. “He also offered multiple bills that would build upon Trump’s regulatory relief for businesses across the country.”
The letter was signed by 25 party officials, including the vast majority of the district’s unit chairs and all of the district’s GOP State Central Committee members.
Later that day, Good held a celebratory rally outside the Powhatan Courthouse with former Rep. Dave Brat, who unseated former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2013 primary election in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District until he was himself ousted by Democrat Spanberger two years later.
Brat and Good were joined by longtime Trump ally and political strategist Steve Bannon, who was ordered last week to surrender to prison by July 1 to begin his four-month sentence for his contempt of Congress conviction, and Patti Lyman, a Fairfax County Republican who serves on the RNC National Committee.
Before a crowd of at least 400 supporters, according to the campaign’s count, Lyman hailed Good as a principled conservative with the guts to stand up against the Republican establishment and who has been targeted by McCarthy’s money machine determined to punish him for rising up to the speaker.
“The reason I have been everywhere Bob Good needed me during his campaign is that this isn’t really about an opponent versus Bob Good, this is about a failed, disgraced ex-speaker versus the House Freedom Caucus,” Lyman told the crowd.
“We have gotten used to seeing Republicans up there fighting back when our own leadership is corrupt, when they turn their back on the grassroots, when they ignore the Constitution. But that didn’t used to happen, ever. People would get [to Congress], and all they’d care about is keeping their nose clean so they could make the money they needed or maybe get the committee chairmanship they wanted.”
McCarthy and his cohorts, Lyman said, “want to take us right back to that, so that these heroes all be silenced. That is the plan, and Bob is not the only one they are doing this to. But they don’t understand that we have a brand new Republican Party, we are never, ever going back.”
This Friday, Good plans to take the fight directly to McGuire’s hometurf by hosting another rally outside the Goochland County Courthouse featuring three of his colleagues from Capitol Hill — Reps. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., and Chip Roy, R-Texas.
Most of the district’s elected GOP officials rallied behind Good
Considering the starpower in the ranks of Good’s campaign, many GOP officials in the 5th District believe that McGuire’s out-of-state support is largely overblown and that even Trump’s endorsement won’t change many minds come primary day.
“The only big name that came into the district that I know of is Marjorie Taylor Greene. The rest of them, he goes to them,” said 5th District GOP Committee Chairman Rick Buchanan. “They don’t come here and he doesn’t do much here, and his big events get 15 to 20 people. The candidate that is bringing in the big names is not John McGuire.”
While Buchanan conceded that Trump’s endorsement was a blow to Good’s campaign, he said that the candidate has been able to recover. “It was a big hit when Trump endorsed, but I think that’s wearing off. John doesn’t really have the support of a lot of people in the district. On the ground here, I don’t think he’s making much progress.”
And if Good is reelected, Buchanan said he believes that Trump — should he become president again — would eventually come around and work with Good.
“It’s like every other player [Trump] has trashed in the primary, he went after most of the candidates in a horrible way and after the primary, most of them backed him up and many of them served in his cabinet. That stuff goes away. And Bob is still supporting Trump, he knows we have to have Trump, we can’t do a thing without him,” Buchanan said.
Good himself agrees with Buchanan’s assessment.
“The best way for President Trump to win Virginia is for me to win this primary, and we’re going to win this primary. I’m the conservative leader in elected office in Virginia, and the conservatives are very upset and disappointed across the commonwealth and the entire country at this endorsement,” Good said.
A primary victory will be an important step for him to help Trump win Virginia in November and help reenergize the conservative base behind his candidacy and his nomination, Good said. “While I’m supporting President Trump now as I did in 2016 and 2020, I’m certain that President Trump will be supporting me on June 19.”
But Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington, said that despite the overwhelming support for Good among the district’s elected GOP officials, Trump’s endorsement represents “a huge advantage” for McGuire, putting the incumbent on the defensive and forcing him to take his conservative credentials and message directly to the voters at dozens of events scattered around the district in recent weeks.
“While prominent Republicans have split in their preferences in this contest, none of them has anything like the influence with Republican primary voters that the former president has,” Farnsworth said.
Next Tuesday, Republicans have a choice between two conservative Republicans with similar policy preferences, Farnsworth added. “But one of them briefly supported Gov. DeSantis during the 2024 presidential nomination campaign, and Trump hopes to drive him out of Congress for failing to support the former president from the start of the 2024 campaign.”
A record-breaking money race
The money that has been pouring into the district from out of state in recent weeks has added to Good’s concern.
The American Patriots PAC alone, which opposes Good’s reelection bid and whose major donors include GOP heavyweights Kenneth Griffin and Paul Singer, accounts for more than $4 million of the almost $10 million invested into both campaigns in recent months.
“They are trying to buy this seat for the establishment, the uni-party swamp,” Good said in the interview. “The reason why I have a primary is completely because I have been willing to fight against the establishment and the status quo, and the Washington swamp is striking back and spending millions of dollars in trying to defeat me.”
But Good’s campaign has also benefited from out-of-state cash infusions, primarily from the Conservative Outsider PAC, which gets almost all of its money from the fiscally conservative nonprofit Club for Growth and has spent $2.5 million supporting Good or attacking McGuire.
“Both of those PACs have also spent elsewhere this cycle, but Virginia’s 5th Congressional District accounts for a majority of their spending in each case,” said Andrew Mayerson, a campaign finance researcher with Washington-based OpenSecrets, which tracks money in U.S. politics.
Protect Freedom PAC, which has received money from Conservative Outsider PAC in the past as well, has also spent $781,000 in support of Good, Mayerson added.
“The next most notable outside spender would probably be Virginians for Freedom, which has spent almost $762,000 supporting McGuire or attacking Good, and — unlike the groups mentioned above — has not spent on any other races this cycle.”
Almost all of the latter group’s contributions on its recently filed pre-primary Federal Elections Commission report come from something called the “America Fund,” Mayerson said. “I can’t find anything about it online, so it’s safe to call Virginians for Freedom a dark money group.”
In total, more than $5 million of the almost $10 million spent on the race has supported McGuire or opposed Good, while $4.5 million supported Good or opposed McGuire. “So it’s a pretty fair fight in terms of outside money,” Mayerson said.
As far as the candidates’ own fundraising efforts, McGuire has managed to outraise Good with $1.24 million to $1.14 million, according to new data by the Virginia Public Access Project. By May 29 — the end of the latest reporting period just three weeks before the election — McGuire had more than $520,000 cash on hand, as opposed to Good, who had less than $170,000.
McGuire backers say he would deliver for the district
Despite the smaller size of his campaign rallies, McGuire enjoys support among many rank-and-file Republicans in the district who believe that Good has failed to deliver.
While in his role as the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus Good has served as a bulwark against the agenda pushed by the administration of President Joe Biden, he has no legislative successes to show for it. Of the 181 pieces of legislation that Good introduced during his second term on Capitol Hill, none was signed into law.
“There is a lot of poverty in the 5th District, and we need help. But we’re not getting it, we’re just getting a lot of obstruction,” said Powhatan County resident Jean Gannon. “Bob Good isn’t bringing anything to the 5th. He’s making a name for himself in Congress, but he’s not doing anything for the people of the 5th District.”
Gannon said that she has known McGuire since he first ran for the House of Delegates in 2017.
“John has the ability to negotiate with everybody in the chamber and bring bills over the line and get them signed by the governor, regardless of partisanship, and I think he can bring that to Congress,” she said.
Of the 16 bills that McGuire introduced during the 2024 General Assembly session — his first as a state senator — three passed on a bipartisan basis and were signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a fact that McGuire often touts on the campaign trail.
Shelby Chandler, a Louisa resident who attended last week’s McGuire’s rally with Greene, said Good has been “disenfranchising and disrespecting” conservative constituents by calling them liberals or RINOs, a derogatory moniker for “Republican In Name Only.”
Chandler said that while to him Trump’s endorsement of McGuire was just the icing on the cake, the former president’s support might have changed some minds.
“This is a 75-80% pro-Trump district, it’s very ruby-red. Maybe it shouldn’t be that way but I think people here will support him because of that,” Chandler said of McGuire. “Trump is well loved, and in my opinion his policies are sound. I think this is a district where if Trump endorses someone, it’s going to have some influence.”
And Christa Deemer, a U.S. Air Force veteran from Louisa County, said that McGuire has her support because of his service as a Navy SEAL.
“When I have to choose between two people, I want to choose the right guy for the job. John’s been at war, he understands what urban warfare is about, he understands about negotiating, he’s been able to help when things go crazy, and with all the new people living in our United States, it’s more and more possible that we are going to see some fallout,” Deemer said.
“We need strong leaders who know how to handle these scary and tense situations. I had already made up my mind before that Trump endorsement, but it certainly is comforting to know that I feel like I made the right choice.”
McGuire said in an interview last week that he takes pride in having a reputation in Richmond of bringing people together. “My nickname in the General Assembly is pitbull,” he said with a smirk.
“I can’t wait to get into Congress to work with Marjorie Taylor Greene and help President Trump make America great again. I got a lot of energy, and I think God gives me that energy, and he gave me a second chance after I broke my neck years ago,” McGuire said, referring to a freak trampoline accident in October 2006 that almost cost him his life and left him walking with a limp.
“So what do you do when you get a second chance? You give all that you got. I love people, I’m having fun with this. You can’t always help people, but when you can, then it’s a pretty good deal.”
To Good, however, McGuire is nothing more than a career politician eager to make a name for himself on the national stage.
“My self-serving, ambitious and prideful opponent who runs for more than one race a year on average, he would have run anyway, because that’s what he does,” Good said in the interview.
“He’s a perpetual candidate in search of a race, he has an insatiable desire to reach for what he thinks is the next rung on the political ladder. I’ve run for two things in my life, Campbell County supervisor and 5th District Congress member. We’re very different in terms of our willingness to serve.”
Rick Boyer, a Republican elections attorney from Lynchburg and a longtime supporter of Good, said that Trump — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee determined to end the House Freedom Caucus chairman’s tenure and send him back to Campbell County — is misreading the political dynamics in the 5th District.
“Bob Good is not his enemy, and never has been. He endorsed DeSantis specifically out of the since-verified fear that judges would have our nominee tied up in criminal court when we need him out on the campaign trail,” Boyer said.
“It’s too bad President Trump doesn’t have a better understanding of Virginia Republican politics. He’s endorsing and paying his enemies, while damaging his friends.”
