An open House district in Virginia stretching 250 miles up from the North Carolina state line to the outer Washington, D.C., exurbs will help test just how blue the commonwealth has become.
The 5th District is open because the sitting Republican, Rep. Denver Riggleman, lost his fight for renomination at a party convention early in the summer. Conservatives said Riggleman, a strong supporter of President Trump, had strayed ideologically after performing a same-sex wedding for a pair of staff members.
Riggleman lost the Republican nomination to Bob Good, a former Liberty University official and a staunch social conservative.
Good now faces Cameron Webb, a doctor and lawyer, whose campaign says it raised $2.7 million in the most recent fundraising quarter.
The district has been Republican for most of 20 years, other than the single 2009-11 House term when Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello held it after riding the blue wave led by former President Barack Obama in 2008.
The district has a plus-6 Republican lean, according to the Cook Political Report. But like much of Virginia, it’s been slowly moving further to the left. Democrats in Virginia have romped to victory in the Trump era. Since 2017, Democrats have won the governorship, all statewide offices, and both chambers of the legislature, ousting three Republican House incumbents in the process.
Good is banking on the district’s traditionally conservative social lean. Webb, meanwhile, is focusing on expanded healthcare and economic development. And his double University of Virginia degrees in law and medicine don’t hurt either in the district, which includes the liberal college town of Charlottesville.
There’s also an open question of how disaffected Riggleman supporters are going to vote. The outgoing congressman and Good have hardly patched up relations since the party convention, which was conducted as a drive-in event during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.
