Home Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good was adamant Wednesday that he may nonetheless eke out a win in his bruising Virginia main contest towards state Sen. John McGuire, regardless of trailing by greater than 300 votes.
After the majority of the ballots had been tallied Tuesday night time, McGuire — who scored the coveted endorsement of former President Donald Trump final month — declared victory, telling supporters: “I’m your Republican nominee.”
However Good, 58, declined to concede, together with his marketing campaign posting on X: “This race stays too near name. We’re in a interval the place the legislation supplies a course of for evaluating the accuracy of all of the vote totals from election day to make sure everybody can have full confidence within the licensed outcomes.”
As of two p.m. Wednesday, McGuire led Good by 0.6 proportion factors with an estimated 98% of the vote in — contained in the 1% margin wanted to set off a recount ought to the incumbent request and pay for it.
“Provisional ballots and mail-in ballots are additionally nonetheless to be counted,” Good’s marketing campaign stated. “We’re asking for full transparency from the officers concerned and endurance from the individuals of the fifth District over the approaching weeks because the certification of outcomes is accomplished. We imagine we are able to nonetheless prevail.”
Virginia’s fifth District GOP main was extensively seen as an opportunity at revenge each for Trump, 78, and former Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)
Good had rankled Trump by endorsing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis within the 2024 GOP presidential main and he was one of many eight Republican rabble-rousers who banded along with 208 Democrats to topple McCarthy as speaker this previous Oct. 3.
Far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who spearheaded the mutiny towards McCarthy, had backed Good, a uncommon occasion of him being at odds with Trump.
“This can be a time the place we have to come collectively as a result of we nonetheless have a whole lot of work to do,” McGuire declared Tuesday night.
“I’m your Republican nominee, however I’m not going to take it frivolously. We’ve received to win in November.”
All through the first, outdoors teams dumped an estimated $10.7 million into the race, with greater than half of it earmarked towards Good, per an evaluation from OpenSecrets.
The fifth District, which covers a lot of the central a part of the commonwealth south of the James River, is extensively seen as stable Republican territory, which means whoever wins the first is favored to maintain the seat crimson in November
A number of outstanding Republicans rapidly cheered the information of Good trailing McGuire.
“This victory exhibits simply how poisonous Bob Good has been to the Republican Occasion, the America First motion, and maybe most critically to the reelection of President Trump,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted on X.
Greene was booted from the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus final yr after a spat with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), whom Greene known as a “little b—.”
Reasonable members of the GOP additionally hailed the first consequence.
“Bob Good has finished extra to undermine and divide Republicans than any Democrat,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) posted on X late Tuesday. “I congratulate John McGuire on an enormous win for the GOP. Goodbye Bob Good.”
