Same side of the aisle

And Riggleman could lose his seat in Congress over it.

Riggleman, who is endorsed by Donald Trumps Sr. and Jr. and by Jerry Falwell Jr., is a former Air Force intelligence officer who has been deployed to the Middle East and the Balkans and who worked in private defense intelligence before going into the distillery business in Virginia with his wife. “My whole life has been hunting terrorists and making whiskey, and I’m very good at those two things,” he told me.

If you’ve heard of him, it’s probably because after becoming the last-minute Republican nominee in 2018, he beat Democrat Leslie Cockburn in a dramatic faceoff that garnered national attention because of a ginned-up sex joke scandal over “bigfoot erotica” Cockburn and clan spread through her daughter, actress Olivia Wilde. Riggleman is being primaried from the religious Right by self-described “bright-red Republican” and “biblical conservative” Bob Good, a former athletic director at Liberty University, who told me, “I will certainly acknowledge that I’m a born-again Christian, I have a biblical worldview. And I have a biblical view of marriage.” Good, noting the party platform, said that “the family matters. Faith and family matters. So, I do accept God’s view of marriage. That’s Bob’s view of marriage.”

Anthony Derek “Rek” Lecounte, one of the grooms of the wedding Riggleman officiated, came out at the end of high school, when he was a Democrat, and became a conservative while always thinking that gay marriage would eventually become legal and accepted. That doesn’t mean it was easy. But it was harder for Alex, his groom, who’s known he was gay since he was a young teenager with an interest in Republican politics and didn’t come out until he was in his twenties.

“For a long time, I didn’t see gay families as legitimate. I obviously agreed with the Republican Party more,” Alex said. His disposition toward the politics of it changed after a friend came out to him. He likes the attention his wedding is still getting “because it was someone else’s coming out that sort of triggered my own. It probably won’t matter to most people. But there might be some closeted person who takes some kind of encouragement from it.”

The story of Riggleman’s fight for survival after officiating the wedding is being told in brief news stories by all the major outlets, in a simplified version jammed into the usual political narratives. But it’s all far more interesting than that. I know, because I was there.

I met Rek while I was visiting my then-girlfriend at Yale. He was the preppiest dude in the Yale dorm’s courtyard despite being a black army brat who hails from bases in Germany, Florida, and Virginia, sitting on a keg, arguing with everybody about politics at one of that once-great university’s “residential colleges,” Timothy Dwight. The next time we met, we drank whiskey through the night at a D.C. bar, and he convinced me to relent that my college-aged ideas about American imperialism were immature after all. After that, he became a regular friend and confidante and sparring partner. I remember when he met a boy I thought was too quiet for him, until I heard that boy zealously explain everything about the machinations of a Republican election he was working on. Then, I thought maybe he was too talkative. By the time Rek told me he was going to propose to Alex and showed me the ring, I knew they were perfect for one another.

Mid-July in the low-lying Virginia mountains with a thunderstorm rolling in, in a suit, is hot. Pea soup hot. As Riggleman got in place to perform the marriage ceremony and the grooms came out in their linen and seersucker Alton Lane outfits, the crowd was already sweating in beads. I had stayed in my friend’s Mustang until the last possible moment with the AC blasting before making my way behind the King Family Vineyard’s event building. But in the moment, during the brief and poignant ceremony, I can’t remember being uncomfortable. I just remember that transporting, transcendent thing that happens at weddings, in which a family is born into the world by the combination of two people’s love and society’s tradition, and everyone there can see it happen.

Riggleman, today, is unapologetic about his choice to marry Rek and Alex, despite the trouble it has caused him. “I would have been a coward not to do it,” he told a constituent on an open call on June 9 while also stressing that he believes civil liberties such as marriage equality and religious liberty are complementary positions that will build a more successful Republican Party. “I don’t want a party that’s just small enough to fit in the bedroom,” the congressman told me.

The primary fight has become bitter. “On a fundamental level, this is not just an innocent disagreement,” Rek told me. The campaigns at least agree on that. While the marriage issue set off the fight, it has become bigger than that. At the center of it are not just issues of cultural conservatism, but the rules of the election itself.

They have been fighting over those rules through the state party’s committee (which Alex now sits on as one of 37 members, most of whom could be broadly described as Team Good). The Good campaign had organized a convention for June 13 at a church, after the pandemic required the earlier scheduled vote to be delayed. A few thousand delegates will vote from their cars. Riggleman says it is the result of unfair play, such as manipulation of voting rules and timing, removal of delegates who should be eligible to vote, and arcane legal maneuvers on the part of the committee members working for pay by Good, designed to put up as many hurdles as possible for voters. (As for funding, Riggleman has outraised all four of his potential Democratic challengers, and Good has outraised none of them, according to NPR.)

There are 514,832 registered voters in Virginia’s 5th. This contest is not a primary, though; it’s a convention, according to the rules the Bob Good people pushed for and Team Riggleman futilely pushed against.

Because of that, only 3,517 people are eligible to vote in this, as delegates, rather than it being every registered voter in the county. It’d be an open primary, as many Southern states have, so Democrats could also vote, but they have their own competitive primary, and you can only vote in one.

The Good campaign says it has signed up a little more than 60% of the delegates. Based on the rules the committee decided upon, according to Riggleman, one county only gave people 18 days in February to sign up to be a delegate. And if you didn’t sign up to be a delegate in those 18 days, you cannot vote.

The Good campaign has used party rules to disqualify some delegates who applied to vote from Good’s home, Campbell County, for being putative Democratic activists. Some have successfully appealed that disqualification legally. Riggleman, who wants primaries to be the de rigueur method of nomination for the party instead of this less-common convention setup, told me, “It’s just sad that instead of a real election, we’re having this faux election, this drive-thru Dairy Queen action that really is awful. And once I win this, I am going to try to make sure that never happens again, so we don’t disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people for the needs of a few.”

Good, who told me he views Riggleman as not even a real conservative, argues that this system is good for the same reason Riggleman thinks it’s bad. “In a convention, it ensures that just Republicans — and frankly, that tends to be the most committed Republicans, admittedly — can vote. Just like on the Democrat side, the harder Left kind of dominates the party. Certainly, the conservatives kind of dominate the party. At least in Virginia, still. So yeah, we’re in a strong position.” Later, Good pointed out that “if Mr. Riggleman thought he was going to win, he would try to have the convention as quickly as possible, just like we are.” June 13 was the earliest legally allowable date for the rescheduled election to be held after the pandemic unsettled the original plan.

Now, the campaigns are slinging accusations back and forth. Riggleman didn’t mince words when I asked him what he felt distinguished him from his challenger: “We disagree on a few things. No. 1 is his supporters’ racist and homophobic rants. His stance on individual liberty that’s incompatible with the Constitution and the Republican Party. And the fact that he doesn’t understand legislation. For the most part, he doesn’t have the ability to talk about legislation in a cogent way.” In recent days, the Riggleman campaign has called on Good to condemn a campaign surrogate, Eddie Deane, for a video in which Deane talks about “queers” who “want your rights” and says “these minorities will not be satisfied.” Good, despite my clear personal investment in this story, did not strike me as a foolish or vicious or unreasonable man over the course of nearly two hours of discussion. He has not responded to this issue, but he told me in a general sense that he “condemns unequivocally, absolutely, racism or prejudice towards anyone of any kind. As a Christian, as a believer who recognizes we’re all made in God’s image, I believe that we’re one race, ultimately, before God. So I condemn, whether you are talking about the Left or the Right or what have you.”

Good’s slams on Riggleman for being “definitely not conservative” seemed thin upon investigation, though. In our conversation, Good was keen to point out that his criticisms were objective and “not Bob Good just cherry-picking some bills that he doesn’t like.” He asked me to look up Riggleman’s rating from online politics guidance tool iVoterguide. iVoterguide ranks Denver Riggleman 5% liberal, 95% conservative, and it notes liberal organizations rank him positively at a rate of 0%.

The real issue that started this fight, though, is Rek and Alex’s wedding. It came up over and over in Riggleman’s final open call with constituents, and it is what Good went to in video of early campaign events. The issue of gay marriage, and of this particular marriage Riggleman performed, is an animating one for Good, who was driven to primary his district’s Republican incumbent by what he sees as Riggleman’s egregious affront not only of performing the wedding, but also letting it be known that he did so in the newspaper, which makes it a “political statement.” Riggleman disagrees with this characterization of what he was doing by officiating the wedding: “Rek and Alex had become friends of mine, helped me on the campaign, and I just thought the world of them. I like them. So when they asked me to do it, it wasn’t just about them helping on my campaign; it was the fact that I respect them, and they’re just very good people. So, I said ‘yes.’ I don’t know if there’s any other explanation for why I would do a wedding for two people that I like.”

In his previous post as county supervisor, Good voted for a motion that defended Kentucky clerk Kim Davis for refusing to comply with the federal ruling legalizing same-sex marriage and compares refusing to comply with the Supreme Court ruling on marriage to states that refused to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act in the 19th century.

I asked Rek and Alex how this has changed their feelings about the Republican Party. Have they been pushed away? “To be honest,” they told me, “mainly for the better. Perhaps ironically. Because, yes, these folks are awful, but the folks who are fighting back against them, who are greater in number, are just so wonderful. And being able to be connected to all these conservative Republicans who are in small cities in rural areas who are just completely supportive of us, and who are just wonderful people in general, is so refreshing. It is a wonderful reminder of the fact that the stereotypes about rural, white, Southern conservatives — and they’re not all white, but — they’re really off-base. That’s just been deeply rewarding to see. The fact that this process has been rigged every which way is a back-handed way of saying they know they would lose a fair fight. And that’s a way of saying that the Republican Party, even here in this rural, Southern district, is not where they are. The Republican Party has moved on from this issue, and I think we’re seeing that every day on the ground, and in actually being active in these circles.”

Bob Good is thoughtful and very forthcoming, and the one question I could not get him to answer substantively is what he thinks two gay men should do with their love if not marry. How should they live, and what does he really think of Rek and Alex’s union? I couldn’t get a clear answer on that. I also asked Rek and Alex, “What do you think of Bob Good’s marriage?”

“I think,” Rek said, chuckling, “it is none of my damn business. And I wish he would feel the same about mine. I believe it to be legitimate, and I wish it success. Though, I’m realizing, I don’t actually know who his wife is. I’ve never seen her, I don’t know her name. I don’t know anything about his wife because he has the luxury of never having to worry about his marriage becoming a campaign issue. And I don’t think that’s an unreasonable thing to want for my marriage.”

“Alex and I moved to Virginia to escape politics,” Rek told me, adding sarcastically, “That is going swimmingly so far.” But this is about a sincere wish to belong. “The goal was always I want to get back to the South where I’m from. We love it here, we love the community. It’s so, so beautiful. Just the natural beauty of the 5th District, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Shenandoah Valley. The wine is great, the hiking trails are great, the breweries. The history, there’s so much history there.”

“You don’t feel oppressed by Charlottesville’s statue of Thomas Jefferson?” I asked, joking to my friend, whom I like to walk the grounds of Monticello with, discussing the petty stuff our lefty friends freak out over. “You know, strangely, I don’t,” Rek said. “He hasn’t been oppressing me lately.”

Nicholas Clairmont is an associate editor at Arc Digital and a regular contributor to the Washington Examiner.