5 more questions about the 5th District Republican primary

For more on the June 18 primaries, see our voter guide.

We are now just eight days away from the increasingly nasty Republican primary in the 5^th Congressional District where Rep. Bob Good, R-Campbell County, faces a challenge from state Sen. John McGuire, R-Goochland County.

Someday we may look back on this as an epic election. Of course, some of that depends on how it turns out.

It’s unusual in Virginia for an incumbent member of Congress to be denied renomination. Good knows this well: He was the one who ousted Denver Riggleman in 2020 after Riggleman had presided over a same-sex wedding. That came in a convention, where party activists hold more sway than in the larger electorate of a state-run primary.

The last time a congressional incumbent in Virginia lost in a primary was a decade ago, and it was certainly epic: Eric Cantor was within sight of being speaker of the House but was defeated by Dave Brat.

A few weeks ago, I laid out five factors that would shape this primary. More recently, I looked at a sixth factor: How much crossover voting will we have, and who would any Democrats wandering into the Republican primary choose? I remain skeptical we’ll see a lot of that — more Democrats have cast early ballots than Republicans have, and while Democrats might well like to embarrass Good and get rid of him, would they really pass up their own three-way primary to vote for the Trump-endorsed McGuire? Still, it could happen so we shouldn’t ignore the possibility.

Today, let’s look at five more factors at play in the 5^th, many of them based on recent events.

1. How much weight will former President Donald Trump’s endorsement of McGuire carry?

McGuire’s whole campaign is based on how his loyalty to Trump surpasses that of Good, who committed the heresy of endorsing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president. Originally, that was based solely on McGuire’s words. Now we have Trump himself saying it. Trump hasn’t just said it passively, either. He’s released a video where he endorses McGuire (and Hung Cao for the Republican Senate nomination) — and trashes Good as “actually bad for Virginia and who will stab you in the back like he did me.”

In such a conservative district as the 5^th, a Trump endorsement for one candidate, and Trump bad-mouthing the other guy, would seem to be a powerful thing. However, this isn’t a case where Trump is targeting a more moderate politician who might be in jeopardy anyway in today’s right-shifted Republican Party. Good is clearly quite conservative (some might say too conservative!), and some of his supporters are clearly bewildered by why Trump is endorsing the other guy. Cardinal’s Markus Schmidt reported last week that 25 Republican officials in the 5^th — a who’s who of the most conservative party activists in the district — have released an open letter to Trump begging him to reconsider.

If McGuire wins on June 18, we’ll all point to the Trump endorsement as a major factor. If he loses, we’ll point to how Good has his own clear-cut identity in that district and not even Trump was strong enough to dislodge him.

It’s worth pointing out that when Good ran the first time, Trump had endorsed Riggleman, but that wasn’t enough to save the incumbent. (Fun fact: That means in two of his three campaigns, Good has run against a Trump-endorsed opponent). I also don’t recall Trump doing much of anything beyond a tweet to help Riggleman. In this case, though, Trump’s campaign is clearly paying attention to this race. It sent Good’s campaign a cease-and-desist order against using campaign signs that list Trump’s name (those signs are still around, though). And Trump adviser Chris LaCivita so closely inspected that open letter that he pointed out a typographical error in the spelling of Nottoway County — the political equivalent of saying “I know where you live.” Republicans who don’t want to wind up on Trump’s bad side have now been warned.

2. How much of the McGuire campaign is an ‘astroturf’ campaign?

That phrase is used to describe campaigns that don’t have a lot of authentic grassroots support but try to manufacture some. McGuire has announced some interesting endorsements — the most interesting being figures in and around Lynchburg, which ought to be Good’s base. (These include Lynchburg Mayor Stephanie Reed, Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi, three members of the Campbell County Board of Supervisors where Good once served, and one former Campbell supervisor.) I’m curious, though, why we aren’t seeing more McGuire endorsements. Is the support just not there? Or are a lot of people trying to keep a low profile by not endorsing either candidate?

McGuire does not lack for money. In the most recent campaign finance reports (filed late last week), McGuire reports having raised $744,361 since March, compared to just $291,014 for Good. Going into the final stretch of the campaign, McGuire’s got a lot more cash on hand that he can spend: $521,021 compared to just $167,821 for Good.

Money can buy lots of things but, contrary to public opinion, it can’t buy elections. The question is always whether the lesser-funded candidate has enough money to get his message out there. Good does. McGuire may be out-raising him but Good still has more money than all but one of the candidates in the 7^th District and all but one in the 10^th District, both of which must communicate through the expensive Northern Virginia media market.

What I wonder about isn’t money, but how many supporters McGuire actually has. Of course, I wonder the same thing about Good, too, which brings me to the next question.

3. How much of Good’s support is limited to the party apparatus?

Good has thrived in the small confines of a Republican convention. He’s closely tied to the party organizations across the 5^th District, as witnessed by the letter that many of those party chairs signed. If this nomination were being decided in a convention, I have no doubt that Good would thrash McGuire many times over. However, that’s not how it’s being decided. Early voters alone have already accounted for more than three times as many voters as Good has ever had to deal with in a party convention — 2,375 in 2020. At last report, some 8,292 votes had been cast early in the Republican primary. The most contentious Republican primaries in the state two years ago drew 37,708 and 41,838 voters apiece (the 7^th District and the 2^nd District). That Brat-Cantor primary a decade ago drew 65,021 voters.

If you’re Good, you have to wonder who all those additional voters might be. They’re obviously more casual Republicans, who show up at the voting booth but not a party meeting. How do they really feel? We don’t really know yet, but we’ll find out.

If McGuire loses, it may be because his support was never as strong as he thought it was — or could be. If Good loses, it may be because he never built support beyond those hardcore party activists. That brings us to:

4. How popular or unpopular is Good?

We are awash with polls at the national level, but there’s a dearth of polling at the congressional district level. I’ve only seen one poll from a group that’s not identified with one side or another here, and that’s the poll from the Virginia Faith and Freedom Coalition. As a general rule, I discount polls that are associated with campaigns or interest groups backing a particular candidate — it’s hard to know how real those are. I’m more inclined to accept the Virginia Faith and Freedom Coalition poll, simply because it’s from an unaffiliated group.

To my eye, the key thing in this poll isn’t that it showed McGuire leading 41% to 31%. It’s that even among likely voters in a Republican primary, Good’s unfavorables were higher than his favorables. The poll showed that only 31% of likely Republican voters had a favorable impression of their incumbent congressman, while 39% had an unfavorable one. Numbers like that are never a good sign for any candidate, especially an incumbent. If people don’t like you, they’re not likely to vote for you.

Meanwhile, McGuire was in a more enviable position — 37% had a favorable impression of him, 26% an unfavorable one.

If you’re a Good campaign strategist, it’s too late to get people to change their minds about the congressman; people have already made up their minds. Even Republican voters just don’t like him very much. The only recourse the Good campaign has is to drive up the other guy’s unfavorables, so don’t look for a lot of happy advertising in the campaign’s final days. (We see much the same thing at the national level: Americans have generally made up their minds about President Joe Biden, and it’s not favorable. His only real hope is to make voters even more uncomfortable with the prospect of Trump 2.0.)

5. How do Republican voters in Lynchburg feel about the party split on the city council?

The Republicans on the Lynchburg City Council are split into two warring camps. We’ll get a chance June 18 to find out how at least some Lynchburg Republican voters feel about that. Voters in Ward IV will get a chance to choose between Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi and challenger Peter Alexander. The contest has a lot of Hill City implications. Much will ultimately depend on the outcome this fall in Ward I, a swing ward with an open seat that could help determine the power balance on the council. However, this Ward IV primary will help determine whether Stephanie Reed (often allied with Faraldi) stays as mayor or whether a more hardline faction will be able to elevate Jeff Hegelson to that chair.

How does this play into the Good-McGuire primary? Faraldi and Reed have endorsed McGuire. Faraldi must be feeling confident enough in his race to be able to take sides in the congressional primary, although given his past conflicts with Good, no one should be surprised that he backed McGuire. I’ll be curious to see how the vote in Ward IV goes: Will the voters be exclusively McGuire/Faraldi and Good/Alexander? Or will we see some splits there, with Faraldi running ahead or behind McGuire?

Eight days isn’t a long time but in politics it can sometimes feel like an eternity. We’re coming up on summer but the closing lines of a wintertime poem from Robert Frost apply here: “Miles to go before I sleep.”