When several hundred gun rights enthusiasts descended on Richmond’s Capitol Square for the annual Lobby Day on Monday, one of their biggest cheerleaders in the legislature, newly elected state Sen. John McGuire, was nowhere to be seen.
The former Navy Seal, who within hours of winning his Senate seat in the 10th District in November endorsed Donald Trump’s reelection bid, was en route back home from Iowa, more than 1,000 miles away from Richmond, where he had campaigned for the former president, who on Monday evening secured a resounding win in the first Republican presidential contest of 2024.
“Folks from all over the country flew into Iowa this weekend, including myself, to help Trump win so we can Save America!” McGuire said in his email newsletter Tuesday morning. “I really enjoyed my conversation with President Trump. We love Trump because he is 100% American, he loves our country and he loves the American people. I am proud to be the first elected official in Virginia to endorse Trump 2024!”
McGuire’s alliance with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee gives him an important advantage in his biggest political fight to date. Before his election for the state Senate was even certified, McGuire announced that he would challenge Rep. Bob Good, R-Campbell County, for the GOP nomination in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, which will be decided in a primary election on June 18 and is set to be one of the most viciously fought in recent history.
In a district that Trump won by 53% in both 2016 and 2020, McGuire’s early endorsement of the Republican frontrunner created the sharpest contrast between himself and Good, who backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in May of last year. And since the announcement of his congressional bid, McGuire has been hammering the Republican incumbent in interviews and on social media, accusing him of “hating Trump,” being a “Never-Trumper” and a “RINO,” a derogatory moniker for “Republican In Name Only,” who is working to help Democrats.
While there may not be very many policy differences between the two candidates, walking away from Trump may not have been the best strategy for Good, said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington.
“There are two things of note here,” Farnsworth said. “One, DeSantis doesn’t look all that competitive, and two, there is an awful lot of energy among Trump supporters and little tolerance for people who are not 100% behind the former president.”
And the Trump campaign, which is notorious for keeping track of former supporters who have turned disloyal, is very much aware of Good’s defection to DeSantis. While Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump adviser who was recently tapped as campaign manager alongside political strategist Susie Wiles, stopped short of announcing Trump’s endorsement of McGuire, he put Good on notice. “Bob Good won’t be electable when we get done with him,” LaCivita said in a text message.
Good in a phone interview last weekend defended his decision to join the DeSantis camp.
“I’ve supported President Trump in 2016 and in 2020, and I would enthusiastically support President Trump if he was the nominee again,” Good said. “But I endorsed Gov. DeSantis back in May because I believed, as I do now, that we need eight years of conservative leadership, and I believe that Gov. DeSantis gives us the best chance to win a general election. And I believe that the job that he did in Florida is the model for the country.”
Good said that McGuire, his unexpected Republican primary opponent, “demonstrated himself to be a perpetual candidate in search of a race, and there’s just no limit to his ambition or his willingness to try and do whatever it takes to reach what he perceives to be the next rung on the political ladder.”
But it will be up to the voters in the 5th District to decide whether they think that McGuire was being honest with them during the Senate race when he asked for their support, Good added. “I do think it’s interesting that he is in his sixth or seventh race in just the last couple of years,” he said. 
McGuire was first elected to the House of Delegates in 2017, representing what was then the 56th District, which included Louisa County as well as portions of Goochland, Henrico and Spotsylvania counties. The 10th Senate District, which he represents today, stretches even further to the west, beyond Danville.
For the 55-year-old, his path to political power was winded and full of obstacles. As a small child, he was abandoned by his parents, who were dealing with substance abuse issues, and he grew up in foster homes around Central Virginia and went to nine different elementary schools, McGuire said during an interview at his office on the sixth floor of the new General Assembly Building in Richmond last week.
“That’s why I’ve never tasted alcohol, never tried drugs or cigarettes. But I always tell people I have other issues, like everybody else,” he said.
Eventually, McGuire and his sister were rescued by their grandparents, who raised the siblings through high school. “My grandfather fought in World War II. He was teaching my Christian faith, and he taught me about loving my country and service and sacrifice, and he had me read books about the Battle of Iwo Jima, the Battle of the Bulge and the history of this great country,” he said.
Influenced by the “Top Gun” movie starring Tom Cruise, McGuire initially sought a career as a pilot. “My grades weren’t great, but I took celestial air navigation, aerodynamics and I had top scores,” he said.
But when he shared his ambitions with his Vietnamese karate teacher in high school, the sensei offered a different perspective. “I told him I wanted to be a pilot, and he said, ‘If they take your plane away, you’re no good. But if you become a Green Beret, you’re a weapon.’ That got me thinking.”
When he saw a magazine story about U.S. elite forces, McGuire found his calling. “It said ‘toughest man alive,’ and it said you got a better chance at being president of the United States by becoming a Navy Seal.”
During his 10-year stint with the Seals, McGuire served all over the world, but he was mostly assigned counter drug missions in South Central America. “I became one of the youngest snipers in Seal Team history,” he said.
After leaving the U.S. Navy in 1998, McGuire returned home and founded SEAL Team PT Inc., a fitness organization “dedicated to helping teams and individuals become stronger, healthier, and more confident,” according to his website. He also got married and raised five children.
In October 2006, McGuire’s life changed forever when he suffered a tragic accident while bouncing on a trampoline with his daughter. When he attempted a backflip, he broke the C4 vertebrae in his neck and was told that he would remain paralyzed. But he was able to learn how to walk again within a year.
McGuire views his public service as a lawmaker as a continuation of his service to the country.
“There are many ways to fight,” he said in the interview. “I never thought that as a legislator we’d be trying to keep boys out of girls’ bathrooms. I really think that my grandfather, who fought for our country in World War II, would roll over in his grave if he saw what is going on in our country right now. So I’ve got a lot of energy, I’m fired up.”
As a legislator he has proven himself as a conservative problem solver, McGuire said.
“I get people to help me, that’s how I do it, it’s called building a team. Seals, we are building a team, we lead and we get it done. I wish I was some genius having great ideas, but they don’t come from me, they come from We the People.” 
But McGuire’s ambitions for a higher political office in Washington first emerged way before last November. In October 2019, while campaigning for reelection to the House of Delegates, he declined to commit to completing his second term, responding to widespread speculation that he was considering a congressional campaign.
Just after winning reelection in November that year, McGuire announced his candidacy for the U.S. Congress for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, but he lost a closely contested convention to Del. Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper, who went on to lose to Abigail Spanberger in the 2020 election.
McGuire’s current bid for Congress has been viewed by many as a replay of 2019, even by numerous fellow Republicans back home in his district who had supported his Senate bid and who are concerned that the lawmaker is trying to use his recent election as a springboard for higher political aspirations instead of serving his constituents in the General Assembly.
“I have to at least give him credit for being consistent,” said Buddy Bishop, the chairman of the Goochland County GOP. “But I can’t take his campaign seriously, and the people in Goochland can’t either. I don’t want any part of it, there’s too much at risk for these kinds of shenanigans.”
Bishop said that he doesn’t consider McGuire’s bid a serious challenge to Good. “I don’t think it’s a threat, but it’s a real distraction, and it does drain off some energy and focus. I will say this, we won everything we pursued in the county for all the races, and we had a victory party, but the party had a dent in it which was almost everybody asking me what the hell is McGuire doing? He’s running against Bob and he hasn’t even been seated yet?”
In response to McGuire’s unexpected announcement, Goochland Republicans on Nov. 16 passed a no confidence resolution against McGuire for going back on a promise “at [the] convention to serve and the full term [in the state Senate] to which he was nominated for.”
“It’s a serious disappointment, because we really do need him in the Senate,” Bishop said. “We need a serious candidate, and I think that McGuire can do some really great work irritating the crap out of Democrats in the Senate, and at least he can cast the right votes. The Senate is a great role for him, because he can really get under people’s skin.”
Martha Muniz, the chair of the Amelia County GOP, said that McGuire’s announcement sent shockwaves through her locality, leaving many Republicans feeling upset and abandoned by him — especially after his promise to voters at the GOP convention in Buckingham County in May that he would serve all of his four years in the Senate, if elected.
“He completely promised that he wouldn’t do this, and now people don’t trust him, because he lied. He bold-faced lied to their faces,” Muniz said in a phone interview. “People are very frustrated. Bob Good is well loved in the 5th District, and it is a waste of time, money and resources at the primary level, when we should be spending it going up against the Democrats in November.”
Also following McGuire’s announcement in November, Duane Adams and Sandy Brindley, two of McGuire’s three former opponents at their party’s nominating convention, said in a joint statement that instead of “continuing to climb the political ladder for his own personal ambition and primarying America’s most conservative congressman, Mr. McGuire should drop out of the race, apologize to his constituents and be the leader we need in Richmond.”
Farnsworth, the political scientist, said that the angry responses from Republicans in the 5th District were no surprise.
“While ambition is to be expected in a politician, voters sometimes are wary about candidates who come across as too ambitious. Getting elected to a four-year term and deciding that even before you’re sworn in that this won’t do is going to be weaponized against him in the Republican primary,” Farnsworth said.
McGuire concedes that the risk of being viewed as overly ambitious was “certainly a concern” when he made the decision to challenge Good. “I care about the people, and I’m here to serve the people. But the thing is, all the people in my Senate district are in the 5th Congressional District, so I will continue to serve the same people.”
Good’s behavior and record were “so egregious, I just couldn’t wait,” McGuire said. “For quite a while people have come up to me and said, John, please primary our congressman.” And McGuire doubled down on attempting to label Good, who in December was elected chairman of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, as a RINO.
“I don’t like calling names, but it’s a little bit of payback, which is probably wrong,” McGuire said. “But Bob Good calls moderate Republicans RINOs. And I don’t like it, because we are supposed to be a team. How can we ever get anything done if we’re not working together?”
McGuire alleged that in 2016, after Trump had won the Republican presidential nomination, Good continued to go after him in the general election. “If you’re attacking the Republican nominee in the general, you’re helping Hillary Clinton. If you say you’re on the Republican team, but you’re helping the Democrat team, that sounds like the definition of a RINO, right?”
McGuire also said that Good helped Democrats when he “basically partnered with Nancy Pelosi, AOC and the Squad in September and took out” Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“Whether you like McCarthy or not, we are frustrated, we all want to get rid of the debt ceiling and the open borders, the fentanyl,” McGuire said. “I’m in this fight. But [Good] believes he’s a hero because he took out Speaker McCarthy. And I believe he partnered with 200-some people that are anti-gun, pro-choice, pro-open borders, because he was frustrated and he wasn’t getting his way. If you’re on the Republican team, but you’re helping the Democrat team, that’s why I call him a RINO.”
Good had been an open critic of McCarthy’s since he was first sworn in to represent Virginia’s 5th Congressional District three years ago. And after his reelection in 2022, Good was one among initially just five House Republicans openly lobbying against McCarthy’s claim to the speaker’s gavel.
“Congress and the American people need a courageous, conservative leader in the House. Kevin McCarthy has not demonstrated over the last two years that he is that leader,” Good said at the time.
But while he eventually helped allow McCarthy to win the speakership by voting “present,” Good in October joined the Virginia congressional delegation’s six Democrats in backing the “motion to vacate” the speaker’s chair. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, had introduced the measure to remove McCarthy two days after the speaker brought a proposal to the House floor to avert a shutdown and keep the government open for 45 additional days. The House then voted 216 to 210 to remove McCarthy — with Good and a handful of other Republicans joining the Democratic majority.
In the phone interview last weekend, Good said that he believes most people across the 5th District and across the country would recognize that McGuire’s RINO charge against him is “a silly accusation from a dishonest and ambitious politician,” and that his vote to oust McCarthy was based on principle, not his own political ambition.
“One thing that is very different between us is that I am willing to stand up to and challenge my own party when it’s wrong, and my opponent has no history or record of ever having done that in the General Assembly,” Good said. “The willingness to remove a speaker who was betraying the trust of the American people when they gave us the House majority a year ago was absolutely the right decision, and I would certainly do it again.” And McGuire, Good added, “obviously would have voted for McCarthy” both times.
But despite his confidence, Good said that he is taking McGuire’s challenge seriously, which he suspects is backed by allies of McCarthy and the Washington establishment, who he said want to retaliate against him for standing up against the status quo.
“It is a very dangerous combination to have someone who will do or say anything to win an election, and I think Mr. McGuire has demonstrated that he is that kind of politician,” Good said.
“However, I respect and trust Republican voters in the district to make the right decision. I am not entitled to the nomination, I am not entitled to be their representative, I had to earn it over the last three years. I will do my best to earn their support and nomination again, and I believe they’ll make the right decision.”
