Almost 24 hours after the polls closed in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, Rep. Bob Good, R-Campbell County, remained locked in a tight renomination contest against a primary challenger endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, Good had managed to slightly close the gap between himself and state Sen. John McGuire, R-Goochland County, to 309 votes out of a total of 62,445 votes cast, putting the incumbent just at the 0.5% margin that would qualify his campaign to request a recount paid for by the state.
McGuire, who was endorsed by Trump last month and who had made his campaign a referendum on which candidate is a more loyal supporter of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, ended Tuesday night up by 327 votes — a margin of 0.52%, which prompted him to declare victory just after 11:30 p.m.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the votes are in and the people have spoken, and it is my honor to be your Republican nominee,” McGuire said after taking the stage at his election night celebration at the Virginian Hotel in Lynchburg, his opponent’s home turf.
Minutes later, his campaign fired off a press release formally claiming victory once again.
“There are still a few votes left to count, but it’s clear that all paths end with a victory,” the statement attributed to McGuire said. “Folks in the 5th District can rest assured that should they elect me in November, they will have an effective fighter in Congress who will get the job done for them. I look forward to working with Trump to beat Joe Biden in November and pass Trump’s agenda in Congress. Trump and McGuire will Make America Great Again!”
While McGuire’s move may have been premature, Good did not respond to it on Tuesday. Instead, he ducked out of his election night party at La Villa Italian Restaurant in Lynchburg before midnight without addressing his supporters or speaking to reporters gathered there.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday morning, Good — who chairs the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus — maintained that the race was still too close to call and that the electoral process needed to run its course.
“We are in a period where the law provides a process for evaluating the accuracy of all the vote totals from election day to ensure everyone can have full confidence in the certified results,” Good said. “Provisional ballots and mail-in ballots are also still to be counted. We are asking for full transparency from the officials involved and patience from the people of the 5th District over the coming weeks as the certification of results is completed. We believe we can still prevail.”
Diana Shores, Good’s campaign manager, said in a text message that while the canvassing started Wednesday, it would take days to complete: “Mail-in ballots must arrive at the registrars’ by Friday, so there are mail-in ballots out. Provisional ballots are being reviewed as well.”
When asked at what point Good would concede the election to McGuire, Shores didn’t respond directly. “We are ensuring that all the votes properly cast are counted,” she said.
For candidates running for public office with an end date in mind, having to wait for the results is a frustrating experience, said Del. Chris Obenshain, R-Montgomery County, who defeated Democrat Lily Franklin in one of the most competitive House of Delegates races west of Richmond last year.
“Every candidate hopes that Election Day is the culmination of their hard work, and it’s tough when that end date gets extended after you worked so hard to get there. None of us like to sit around and wait for something that is out of our hands, because at that point all the votes have been cast,” said Obenshain, who finalized his victory over Franklin in a very close contest after an additional six days of ballot tabulations.
While Franklin managed to close the gap significantly — from a margin of 943 down to 183 votes, according to data from the Virginia Department of Elections — it wasn’t enough to push her over the edge. With all votes in, Obenshain topped Franklin with 50.31% to 49.57%.
While waiting for the ballots to be counted, he tried to go about his normal life, Obenshain said in a phone interview Wednesday.
“I went back to work the next day, and I was working that whole week. But you also have your campaign staff and people who are monitoring everything, and obviously as a candidate you are doing that as well.”
But when it’s just a matter of counting additional ballots, there’s not a lot a candidate can do, Obenshain added.
“You typically want to keep an eye on the process and make sure that this is being done correctly, and that you have your people on the ground making sure that the provisional ballots are being counted correctly, as well as the absentee ballots that are coming in late, and that all these processes that we have to ensure that the integrity of the election are being followed.”
Miles Coleman, the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said in an email Wednesday that it does seem like the Good campaign thinks it can still pull ahead.
“Whether they actually can is of course very up in the air, because mail-in votes will account for much of what’s outstanding, and McGuire has carried the mail-ins that have already been counted,” he said.
While McGuire may end up being right, one could certainly argue that his declaration of victory on Election Day was premature, Coleman added.
“The cynical take would probably be that he did that intentionally, in order to lay the groundwork for any ‘fraud’ claims that would arise if the result is reversed, and those claims are something that the MAGA faithful eat up, even if their guy comes out on top. And it’s unfortunate, considering election workers have had such a challenging stretch in the Trump era,” Coleman said, referring to Buckingham County, where elections director Lindsey Taylor and her staff quit last year after years of unfounded accusations of wrongdoing and treason by county residents stemming from the 2020 presidential election.
Good, who is seeking a third term in Congress, antagonized Trump last year by initially endorsing his presidential primary opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump then attacked Good, whom he had once endorsed, too, by backing McGuire’s primary challenge.
“If he’s reelected, Bob Good will stab Virginia in the back, sort of like he did with me,” Trump said at a tele-rally for McGuire on Monday.
