Va. 5th District vote count continues in closer-than-expected contest (2024)

Another has it that the 45th president, who sought revenge for Good’s endorsem*nt of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for president, is losing his sway with Christian conservatives, whose support helped Good stay competitive amid brutal attacks from Trump and the party’s big-spending establishment.

Those are just a couple of the conclusions that independent political analysts and Republican partisans were drawing Wednesday, as local elections officials around the rural central Virginia district launched what could be a long slog to decide who won the nomination. Starting with a tally of provisional ballots and Election Day-postmarked mail-ins that straggle in by Friday, the effort is likely to expand to a full recount that could take weeks.

Analysts and Republicans across the party’s MAGA-to-mainstream spectrum were not waiting for all that to shake out before trying to make sense or political hay out of the closer-than-expected contest. And like the election itself — with McGuire claiming victory, Good not conceding and the Associated Press not yet calling the contest either way — there was little agreement about what it all means.

“We don’t know if Good won or not. We’re not going to know for a month,” former Trump White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon told The Washington Post.

But Bannon, who backed Good in a rare break with his old boss, said he could already identify the loser: former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his “revenge tour.”

After Good played a key role in ousting McCarthy from the speakership, McCarthy sought to unseat him and seven other House Republicans who voted him out. Even if McGuire prevails, Bannon contends, the close finish is embarrassing given the money and effort McCarthy poured into it.

“This guy’s the former speaker of the House and he has been humiliated,” Bannon said, noting that McCarthy’s effort to unseat Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) fell short.

Trump put considerable skin in the game, too, endorsing McGuire, calling Good a backstabber, making a TV ad for the challenger and phoning in to his tele-rally the night before the election. But Bannon does not see the former president similarly tarnished by a race that both candidates turned into a referendum on who loves Trump more.

“I think it shows how much President Trump is beloved by MAGA,” Bannon said.

Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, agrees that the close race is more likely to stick to McCarthy, who has been focused on ousting the eight House Republicans, than Trump, who has endorsed “hundreds of candidates across the country.”

“If he couldn’t get rid of Nancy Mace or Bob Good, then who is he going to oust?” Wasserman said.

Yet veteran Richmond political analyst Bob Holsworth said the photo finish made Trump look weak.

“The fact that it was so close suggests that Trump’s reach is not as deep and extensive as may have been thought,” he said.

Holsworth said that might be particularly true for Christian-right voters who understood the rationale that Good, an alum and former official at Liberty University, offered for endorsing DeSantis: The governor is more conservative than Trump on abortion and guns.

“A number of folks who supported Good, most of them are still going to vote for Trump, but I think he looks somewhat petty and they just never saw the rationale for getting rid of someone whose values they respect,” he said. “These folks are not turning around to vote for Biden, but Trump needs them to come out … Does Trump, to them, start to look like just another self-interested politician?”

David Richards, chairman of the political science department at the University of Lynchburg, thinks both sides have reason to hang their heads.

“I think it’s kind of embarrassing for both Trump and Good because neither one could push it over the hill,” he said.

On a more upbeat note, he said, the results might hint that voters are getting wise to baseless political attacks such as the ones that painted McGuire and Good, both ultraconservatives, as anti-MAGA moderates. Or at the very least, the ads left voters so confused by those claims that they flopped.

Richards noted one particular anti-McGuire ad that he called “almost parody,” describing the challenger as “this incredible liberal that’s going to let in all the aliens, and drag queens in schools and defund the police.”

One rare area of agreement among observers chewing over the race: Almost everyone expects allies of 2020 election-deniers Good and McGuire to watch the counting and recounting like hawks.

“It’s not lost on us that these are two candidates who were highly critical of the administration of the 2020 election who are now locked in a much tighter overtime situation,” Wasserman said. “It could turn into a ‘Stop the Steal’ situation where Democrats are sitting back with popcorn, even if they don’t have a chance of winning this district.”

Bannon was already raising alarms in an interview with The Post on Wednesday.

“People have to be all over every one of these ballots, and we have to make sure chain of custody [is observed],” he said.

Those predictions were playing out Wednesday, with both campaigns dispatching observers to local elections offices around the district that were beginning the canvass process.

Unofficial figures so far indicate a margin of victory well within the threshold required to request a recount and just inside of what’s required for the state to cover the cost.

Under state law, the apparent loser of an election may request a court-run recount at his or her own expense if the margin of victory is not greater than 1 percent of total votes cast. The state picks up the tab if the margin is not greater than 0.5 percent.

The recount process would not begin, however, until after the results are certified.

“This race remains too close to call,” Good posted on X shortly before noon Wednesday. “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. … We believe we can still prevail.”

McGuire wrote on X shortly after midnight: “There are still a few votes left to count, but it’s clear that all paths end with a victory.”

Albemarle County outside Charlottesville was a Good stronghold. On Wednesday, as the local electoral board prepared to begin canvassing voting results, representatives for each candidate’s campaign were on hand to scrutinize the process. Any change in totals could be significant in the overall outcome.

“It’s crazy, right?” said Waverly Woods of Virginia Beach, who observed for the Good campaign. No one had expected the race to be so close, she said, “but you never know how things are going to turn out in Virginia.”

Teemu Garrity, campaign manager for McGuire, joined her at folding tables set up for the vote tally in a cavernous room at the Albemarle government center.

“There is no mathematical way Bob Good can win this election,” said Garrity, who emulated McGuire’s Navy SEAL background by spelling his name using military nomenclature: “Tango, echo, echo….”

As elections officials began opening envelopes containing results from each of the county’s 32 precincts, Woods took notes in a notebook and Garrity on a laptop. They occasionally asked officials to clarify numbers.

Despite his confidence, Garrity intended to watch the vote count for as many hours as the election workers planned to be there. “You might want to get some caffeine,” he said.

Once the main results are canvassed, officials said, it could be Monday before all the county’s provisional and mail-in ballots are tabulated.