The primary challenge to Rep. Bob Good appears to be serious.
I realize that state Sen. John McGuire’s campaign to wrest the Republican nomination from the 5th District congressman — who also just happens to be chair of the House Freedom Caucus — has seemed serious for some time now.
McGuire has pulled in some big-name national endorsem*nts — namely former New York Mayor Rudy Guliani, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the latter of whom will campaign for him this week in Farmville, Lynchburg and Goochland — although it’s always been unclear whether those names move any voters on the ground.
McGuire has also racked up some noteworthy local endorsem*nts — three sitting supervisors and one former supervisor in Good’s home base of Campbell County, Lynchburg Mayor Stephanie Reed and former Bedford County Sheriff Mike Brown — but you never really know which endorsem*nts matter and which ones don’t.
Now we have a new measure of the 5th District Republican race: campaign finance reports. The two candidates are more or less even on the money front.
Before we dive deeper into the numbers, let me make my usual Miranda warning about money: Money matters, just not as much as many people think it does.
I’ve seen plenty of candidates who had the most money lose. I’ve seen others who didn’t have as much win. What really matters is that a candidate has enough to get his or her message out to the voters he or she is trying to reach — whether that money actually motivates them is another matter entirely.
Here’s what we know for certain:
In 2023, Good raised a lot more than McGuire — $548,176 to $212,422. Of course, Good was in office the whole year while McGuire didn’t announce his candidacy until November, just after he’d gotten elected to the state Senate (a sore point with some).
Now we have figures for the first quarter of 2024. Good has raised $307,617. McGuire has raised — well, it’s hard to tell. The Federal Election Commission reports say that McGuire raised $290,326, so somewhat behind Good. McGuire, though, sent out a statement saying he’d raised more than $325,000. I read nothing into that except accounting differences; these reports deal with money through March 31 so maybe some money came in after that date that McGuire is counting that ups his total so that he can claim, as he did, that “McGuire has now out-raised Bob Good in both quarters since entering the race.” Update, 7:30 p.m.: McGuire’s campaign says this discrepancy is because the $325,00 figure reflects multiple political action committees their candidate has; so there’s additional money besides the $290,326 figure that shows up initially on the FEC report.
By my math, it doesn’t really matter whether Good is somewhat ahead or McGuire is somewhat ahead — the point is they’re pretty close and that’s what really matters. Dollars aren’t votes; a slight advantage in votes is a big deal. What these campaign finance reports tell me is that McGuire is putting together a campaign that will likely be funded on the same scale as Good’s, and therefore should be taken seriously until proven otherwise. Voters may still look at him and say “nah,” but that’s down the road. Right now, we have no public polls, so the only hard data we have to assess this race are endorsem*nts (which are always imperfect measures) and money (which does have the advantage of being real).
Consider the alternative here: If these campaign finance reports had shown McGuire with only pennies in his treasury, it would be far easier to say his campaign is Macbeth-like — all sound and fury signifying nothing. Instead, he’s picking up money at about the same rate Good is, so, as the character Linda Loman says in “Death of a Salesman,” “attention must be paid to such a person.”
(Two literary references in one paragraph! Where else can you find that?)
Now for another measure of financial health: cash on hand.
Some campaigns burn through money the way Sherman burned his way through Georgia (or, to be more true to our Virginia roots, the way Philip Sheridan burned his way through the Shenandoah Valley). We often have a word for those campaigns: “losers.” The key with money is always to use it wisely, and to make sure you have enough of it at the end of the campaign — that’s when voters are paying the most attention.
As of March 31, Good had $427,342 on hand, McGuire had $351,813. That’s an advantage for Good but not a huge one. In fact, I’m surprised that Good doesn’t have more.
For context:
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Fairfax County, has more than $3.9 million on hand.
Eugene Vindman, a Democrat seeking his party’s nomination in the 7th District, has more than $1.8 million on hand. (More on the 7th to come.)
Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Virginia Beach, has $1.785 million on hand.
In all, 11 congressional candidates around Virginia have more cash on hand than Good — five incumbents, six first-time candidates.
That catches my eye and leads me to this conclusion: Neither of these candidates in the 5th District Republican race is exactly raising an unusual amount of money.
When we look just at the money raised in the first quarter of 2024, we find 10 congressional candidates who have raised more than either Good or McGuire, even if we use McGuire’s larger figure.
The candidate who has raised the most is Vindman: $1.7 million. Kiggans is second at $647,207, Connolly third at $545,955.
Maybe Good has been too busy with his Freedom Caucus chair duties to raise money, but I would have thought that as chair of an important caucus, a lot of money would have come his way. McGuire’s totals are noteworthy mostly because he’s on a rough par with Good — but if he were running in one of these other districts, he’d be way behind in the money race. Four Democratic candidates for the open seat in the 10th Congressional District have raised more this year than either Good or McGuire.
The 5th District Republican contest is the only one in the state where we have an incumbent being challenged for the nomination, so we don’t have an exact comparison to make so for now, we’ll just have to leave this here: The Good-McGuire race seems to be a serious one.
By the way, a shout-out: All this data comes from the Federal Election Commission, but the Virginia Public Access Project has done a better job of organizing it and presenting it. You can explore all the data on their visual.
Now, let’s have a quick look at some of the other races:
7th District
Rep. Abigail Spanberger is retiring so she can seek the Democratic nomination for governor in 2025. That creates an open seat, with a lot of candidates on both sides — seven Democrats and six Republicans. As we’ve seen, Vindman is blowing everyone away when it comes to money, having raised nearly $3.8 million so far. Whether that money lead translates into votes, we’ll see. Coming in second place on the Democratic side is Margaret Franklin at $241,347.
Among Republicans, Derrick Anderson is the money leader — he’s raised $888,595, well ahead of second-place fundraiser Cameron Hamilton at $499,811.
(If Vindman’s name sounds familiar, it’s because his twin brother testified before Congress about then-President Donald Trump’s “perfect” phone call with the Ukrainian president — and that testimony resulted in Trump’s impeachment.)
10th District
Here’s another open seat with a traffic jam of candidates. Rep. Jennifer Wexton, D-Fairfax County, is retiring for health reasons. We have four Republicans but 12 Democrats. On the Democratic side, Del. Dan Helmer leads the money pack with $1,113,778, just ahead of Krystle Kaul at $930,070. Just behind them are former Virginia House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn at $759,562 and Del. Suhas Subramanyam at $679,184.
Among Republicans, Mike Clancy is the money leader at $347,161.
U.S. Senate
Republicans have five candidates seeking the right to run against U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine. The leading candidate money-wise is Hung Cao, who has raised just over $2 million, but was the subject this week of an unflattering story in the Staunton News-Leader that raised questions about why money he raised for General Assembly candidates never got to them. In second place is Scott Parkinson at $841,133.
Whoever the winner is will face a formidable task: Kaine has raised $9.3 million — and has $8.75 million of it on hand.
If these numbers stagger you, well, welcome to politics. I’ll also just gently point out that some of these figures dwarf our budget here at Cardinal News. If you’d like to see more journalism in Virginia, you can help make that happen. We’re a nonprofit — and we’re not running for anything. But we do have some cool merch. Even bumper stickers!
