Republican Bob Good Defeats Cameron Webb In Virginia House Race
Republican Bob Good defeated Democrat Cameron Webb for the U.S. House of Representatives seat in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, holding the seat for Republicans as Democrats look to add to their House majority elsewhere.
Good is a former Liberty University fundraiser and former CitiFinancial regional manager who describes himself as a “biblical conservative” and who campaigned as a law-and-order acolyte of President Donald Trump.
The district has been represented since 2018 by Republican Denver Riggleman, whom Good defeated in a June Republican convention, a shakeup largely attributed to the fact that Riggleman had officiated a same-sex wedding in 2019.
In a censure resolution last year, the Rappahannock Republican Party didn’t mention the wedding, but said Riggleman had strayed from “traditional Republican Party values of fiscal restraint and curbing runaway deficit spending by Congress.” A Riggleman spokesperson said the resolution was “part of an ongoing effort to punish Denver Riggleman for his recent officiation of a same sex wedding.”
Webb, 37, is a doctor who has been treating coronavirus patients while running for office as a healer of America’s partisan rift. He is the co-director of the Department of Public Health Science’s Health Policy Program at the University of Virginia.
In September, the Cook Political Report shifted its rating of the race from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up,” because of Republican disunity and Webb’s stellar candidacy.
“In Webb, Democrats may have found their own ‘unicorn:’ a young Black doctor who graduated from UVA, has treated COVID patients, whose wife (also a physician) is from rural Southside and whose father served in law enforcement for 20 years,” Cook’s David Wasserman wrote.
Webb’s campaign focused on health care, and in a TV ad, he described himself as eagerly bipartisan. He served as a White House fellow from 2016 to 2017.
“Working for both presidents Obama and Trump, I watched how toxic partisan politics can be,” he said in a campaign ad. “I’ll work with Democrats, Republicans and the president when they’re right, and stand up to any party leader when they’re wrong.”
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
