The Republican primary race in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District between House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good and state Sen. John McGuire was too close to call late Tuesday night and a recount looked to be a real possibility.
However, Mr. McGuire claimed victory in the race around 11:40 p.m. at his election night party.
“The votes are in and the people have spoken,” he said. “It is an honor to be your Republican nominee.”
In a statement emailed just after the remarks, Mr. McGuire added: “There are still a few votes left to count, but it’s clear that all paths end with a victory.”
At around 11:40 p.m. when he made his remarks and with 93% of the vote in, Mr. McGuire held a razor-thin lead, garnering 50.3% of the vote compared to Mr. Good’s 49.7%.
That margin was less than 400 votes but Mr. McGuire had been holding onto the lead late into the night after it changed hands multiple times in the initial hours after the polls closed.
However, no major media outlets called the race as of midnight and Mr. Good did not concede.
He posted on social media around 11 p.m. suggesting it could be days before the final results are in and thanked his supporters.
“The entire DC Swamp was aligned against us with over $10 million in attack ads, but with your help we were able to make this race too close to call,” he said.
“We implemented the best early voting operation that the 5th District has ever seen, and we are still waiting for the results of mail-in ballots and provisional ballots. We are doing what we can to ensure we have teams of observers and legal counsel to ensure all the votes are properly counted in the coming days.”
Virginia law does not provide for an automatic recount, but a candidate can ask for one if the election-night margin of victory is less than 1 percentage point.
Elsewhere in the state, Army veteran Eugene Vindman, whose twin brother Alex Vindman was a key witness in Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, won the seven-candidate Democratic primary in Virginia’s 7th District.
Mr. Vindman will attempt to keep the district in Democrats’ hands and succeed Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who opted to run for governor next year instead of reelection to the House.
But Republicans are hoping to flip Virginia’s 7th District.
Derrick Anderson, a former Army Special Forces platoon leader who was backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and other GOP leaders, won the six-way GOP primary. His closest challenger Cameron Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL, had support from Mr. Good and other Freedom Caucus members.
In the commonwealth’s 10th District, state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam won a 12-way Democratic primary to run for the open seat.
Rep. Jennifer Wexton, Virginia Democrat, is retiring because of health complications she has faced after being diagnosed with Progressive Supra-nuclear Palsy, which has been referred to as “Parkinson’s on steroids.”
The district used to be competitive but after redistricting leans heavily Democratic, so Mr. Subramanyam is favored to win in November.
The 5th District primary brought together differing factions within the Republican Party against Mr. Good — from former President Donald Trump and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his establishment allies in Congress to aggrieved current and former Freedom Caucus members Reps. Warren Davidson and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Mr. Trump turned against Mr. Good over his support of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president, despite Mr. Good immediately flipping to endorse the former president once Mr. DeSantis dropped out.
“After I won the primaries, he became a big fan. But that’s not good enough, because those are the people that they tend to leave you very quickly,” Mr. Trump said Monday on a tele-rally boosting Mr. McGuire’s candidacy.
Despite Mr. Trump’s claims that Mr. Good would “stab Virginia in the back,” he offered no specific criticisms of the Freedom Caucus chair’s policy positions. Instead, he alluded to complaints from many House Republicans that Mr. Good is more focused on obstructing legislation than advancing it.
“He was against things that everybody would have wanted and always made it difficult,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s not a very popular guy, I will tell you that.”
Mr. Good has not engaged in the one-sided feud, talking up his support for the former president and touting the Freedom Caucus as the group that will fight most for Mr. Trump’s policies in Congress.
Even Mr. Trump acknowledged on the Monday tele-rally for Mr. McGuire that he has no current issues with Mr. Good, saying, “he was fine the last six months, but before that he was a basic disaster.”
The tight race also represents Mr. McCarthy’s best shot at revenge against the eight lawmakers that ousted him in October.
Mr. McCarthy, who backed Mr. McGuire and helped funnel outside money toward his campaign, has been working to defeat those eight Republicans in primaries but hasn’t had any success to date.
After Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, one of the eight Republicans, pummeled her McCarthy-backed challenger last week, the former speaker said on Fox News that Mr. Good’s contest was “the real race” to watch.
Other House Republicans, either bitter over Mr. McCarthy’s ousting or upset at Mr. Good’s disruptive behavior against the House GOP’s agenda since taking over as House Freedom Caucus chair, endorsed Mr. McGuire with several traveling to the district to campaign for him.
Even a member of Mr. Good’s Freedom Caucus, Mr. Davidson of Ohio, endorsed Mr. McGuire in the final days of the campaign.
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
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