You can see our story on Democrat Beth Macy here.
Congressman Ben Cline fired up a crowd of a few dozen campaign rally attendees inside of an event space in Winchester on a Tuesday morning just a few weeks before the midterm elections.
The Republican incumbent’s line of attack was leveled against Virginia’s Democratic lawmakers and the recent effort to redistrict the commonwealth.
“They wanted to take our district and split it five different ways,” Cline told the crowd. “They wanted to split the district and pass it out to so many different Fairfax-faced seats and make sure that they silence your voice. Are we going to let them silence your voice?”
The crowd responded with a resounding “no.”
“Are we going to speak loud and clear that the valley stands for bright red Republican values?” he asked.
The response he received was a resounding “yes.”
Outside of the event, supporters of Cline’s Democratic challenger, Beth Macy, were rebuffed from entering the venue. After they were turned away at the door, they held signs against the windows that read “Groceries cost more? Thank a Republican,” “Democrats protect your vote, Republicans don’t,” and “Are we great yet? ’Cause I just feel embarrassed.”
Cline told the crowd inside to “wave to the Democrats outside.”
Eventually the window blinds were lowered, and law enforcement escorted the protesters away from the event space adjacent to a county store at the top of softly rolling hills. A solar farm could be seen in the distance.
It was the first of three campaign rallies for Cline that day as he traveled down Interstate 81 and through the 6th Congressional District. Supporters of his opponent, Beth Macy, made their presence known at each stop.
The last Democrat to hold the 6th District seat was Rep. Jim Olin, who retired in 1992. Republicans have won the district with comfortable double-digit margins in every election with a challenger on the ballot since, in a district that spans from the Shenandoah Valley to the Roanoke Valley. Cline won reelection in 2024 over his Democratic opponent with a 28.3 percentage point margin of victory.
The 2025 gubernatorial race saw Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears win the district by a 17.4 percentage point margin. Gov. Abigail Spanberger went on to win the state with a 15% margin of victory. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has listed the 6th District race as “solidly Republican.” Sabato’s Crystal Ball, run by the University of Virginia Center for Politics, also lists the race as “safe Republican.”
But this midterm election cycle was the first congressional race of Cline’s in which he has been consistently outraised by his Democratic opponent. As of Oct. 14, Macy had outraised the incumbent — $2.9 million across more than 4,513 individual contributions to Cline’s $1.9 million across more than 1,225 individual contributions. Macy’s haul includes $712,989 in small-dollar contributions, compared to $81,034 that Cline garnered in small-dollar contributions. The Federal Elections Commission considers small-dollar contributions to be less than $200.
The national headwinds faced by Republicans and an unpopular president driven largely by economic woes threaten to chip away at Cline’s comfortable margin.
It remains unclear if recent increases in grocery, fuel and energy costs — largely driven by U.S. involvement in the conflict in Iran as well as tariffs levied by the Trump administration against trade partners — are enough to change the crimson district to even a pale red, let alone flip it to a soft periwinkle.
When Cline took the campaign trail alongside former Gov. Glenn Youngkin that Tuesday, his support for President Donald Trump was not a focus. Instead, the slate of speakers at each stop focused on the failed redistricting effort.
The failed redistricting attempt as a cudgel
At the Winchester campaign stop that Tuesday morning, Del. Delores Oates, R-Warren County, lambasted General Assembly Democrats’ effort to redraw Virginia’s congressional map. The proposed map included 10 districts where Democrats had an edge. Virginia’s existing map features six districts represented by Democrats and five districts represented by Republicans.
“I want to remind all of you what happened in April,” Oates told the crowd. “What the Democratic Party tried to do in Richmond was to get rid of that man in the back of the room, Congressman Ben Cline, and have us represented by Fairfax. They wanted to Fairfax Virginia. Don’t forget that, and tell your friends.”
For a brief period of time, Cline was facing reelection in one of those redrawn districts that put Democrats at a slight advantage.
The Democratic-controlled General Assembly introduced and passed a constitutional amendment in October 2025 and again in January 2026. The effort was narrowly approved by voters in April.
Democratic leadership in the General Assembly called the redistricting effort necessary after President Donald Trump called on conservative-led states to change their congressional maps in favor of GOP candidates ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. A number of Republican-led states had redrawn their maps in an effort to give Republicans an advantage in picking up seats in the midterm elections. Democratic-led states, including California, had done the same for their party in response.
A series of Republican-led lawsuits made their way to the Supreme Court of Virginia, which ultimately struck down the effort in May and returned Cline to his comfortably held seat.
That effort gave the incumbent a new campaign platform during a time when the tide appears to be out for Republicans.
“We were going to be an afterthought,” Cline told a group of a few dozen supporters at his second campaign stop of the day. The event took place at Common Ground, a Christian event space and church in a Fishersville strip mall along a flat and windy stretch of State Route 608. A campaign staffer stood at the door to check in registered guests. A barbecue food truck sat in the parking lot outside, unaffiliated with the campaign.
“They were seeking to silence rural voices,” Cline asserted, to murmurs of affirmation from the crowd.
At least one Macy supporter was in attendance — she voiced her opposition to Cline and the Republican Party quietly to Cardinal News once the speeches had concluded, after she unbuttoned her neon pink blazer to reveal a “Beth Macy for Congress” T-shirt underneath.
Cline walks a tightrope amid Trump’s unpopularity
The 6th District has been far from immune from the economic woes driven by U.S. involvement with the conflict in Iran and the downstream effects of Trump’s tariffs. The president’s nationwide approval rating hit historic lows heading into the midterm elections, hovering between 32% and 37%, depending on the poll.
In stump speeches that day and following press interviews, Cline reaffirmed his support for the president and his decisions, even as he acknowledged that the top issue he has heard from voters across the district is soaring prices at the gas pump and grocery store.
“Folks are concerned about prices. They want to make sure that we bring spending down, bring inflation under control, make sure that we make gas more affordable, prices more affordable, and this administration is working hard to make that happen,” he said during an impromptu press conference in Roanoke that evening.
To get energy and gas prices down in the short term, Cline told Cardinal News in an earlier interview that the conflict with Iran would need to be resolved swiftly and on U.S. terms. Cline had voted against efforts to invoke the War Powers Resolution, which would have challenged the president’s actions in Iran.
“Negotiations are ongoing, but we always have to keep military action on the table, and that has to be kept in mind as we force Iran to accept the conclusion of the conflict on our terms,” he said.
Cline added that the president is using tariffs as a tool to “right our trade relationships with nations around the world” to benefit the U.S. in the long term.
“It’s definitely something that I don’t support as a permanent solution, but as a tool for negotiating better trade agreements, I think it’s appropriate,” he said.
The congressman expanded on one subject on which he has walked a tightrope in supporting the president while pushing back on executive decision-making in support of his constituents — a decision by Trump in August to temporarily suspend tariffs on up to 300,000 tons of imported lean beef trimmings.
Cline, who sits on the House Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture, said that he is concerned about the high cost of beef for consumers, driven largely by dwindling cattle inventory, drought and increased production costs.
“We also have to keep in mind that as an ag-producing district, farmers here in the district are benefiting from higher prices and do not benefit from importing additional levels of foreign beef,” he said. “I’m confident that [the president] will be able to negotiate an agreement that benefits both consumers and farmers here in the district.”
Cline added that he has worked to make sure the president is aware and understands the impact that importing beef has on American farmers.
“I have made that clear to the White House that it does impact 6th District farmers,” he said. “Whenever there’s an issue that we differ with the White House, I’m not going to hesitate to convey that. It may not be done on the 6 o’clock evening news, but it is done through the Office of Legislative Affairs and their team, who make sure that the president understands the impact or different concerns we may have or differences we may have on policies.”
Regardless of the obstacles faced by Republicans across the country, Cline said he felt good about his reelection prospects.
A five-pronged homework assignment from the former governor
Cline’s final campaign stop of the day was billed as a rally and fundraiser to take place in two different rooms at Roanoke’s Shenandoah Club, which bills itself as “Virginia’s oldest private club.” The rally, which was slated to take place in a large meeting room on the building’s ground floor, was moved at the last minute to the more intimate gathering space where the fundraiser was held.
On the sidewalk outside of the building, Macy and a small group of her supporters made their presence known to attendees as they pulled into the parking lot. One wore a chicken suit, and Macy held a chicken that clucked when squeezed. They held signs that depicted Cline’s head on a chicken body and others that read “No spine Cline.” The “chicken” theme promoted by Macy’s campaign is attributed largely to a lack of debates between the two candidates. Cline’s campaign has said that they offered a number of different forum opportunities to Macy, but Macy’s campaign asserted that a forum is not a debate.
Inside the building, Cline, Youngkin, Sen. Chris Head, R-Botetourt County, and Del. Joe McNamara, R-Roanoke County, appealed to the monied crowd, with the crackle of a video-recorded fireplace playing on a television in the background. Del. Terry Austin, R-Botetourt County, and Sen. David Suetterlein, R-Roanoke County, attended the event along with prominent business leaders such as Heywood Fralin.
“Every day, I go and fight, whether it’s on the Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture or on the judiciary committee with Chairman Jim Jordan, or the budget committee or the intelligence committee, I’m fighting for rural Virginia, and I’m going to keep doing it despite the efforts to silence our voices,” Cline said. “Whether it’s at this rally or another rally up in Winchester or their attempts to gerrymander, we’re not going to allow them to silence our voices, are we?”
The crowd responded with a loud “no!”
Earlier that day, Youngkin, the headliner at each campaign stop, expressed concern that the Republican Party in Virginia has seen decreased voter turnout in each election following the one that catapulted him to the governor’s mansion in 2021.
He closed his speech that evening in Roanoke the same way he had each of his three speeches that day, in an effort to combat that decline in participation — with a five-pronged homework assignment for the crowd.
The first prong, Youngkin said, is to vote. The second was to donate money or time to support Cline. The third: to put a Cline sign in their yard or a bumper sticker on their car. The fourth: volunteer to work the polls, phone bank or write letters to voters in support of Cline. And the fifth was to make sure at least 10 friends or acquaintances vote.
“You wrap all of that in prayer,” Youngkin told each crowd that day, “and we win.”
