Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) and Del. John McGuire (R-Goochland) are denouncing each other as RINOs — Republicans in name only.
Buttonholing voters on the midway in this red central Virginia town one recent Friday night, the Virginia state senator [McGuire] made a pro-Trump, anti-establishment pitch fit for an ordinary GOP primary fight, the kind with a moderate incumbent challenged from the right. But the Republican whom McGuire wants to oust in the June 18 primary is
Rep. Bob Good, chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.
One of Washington’s most unyielding Christian conservatives, Good unseated a fellow Republican four years ago who officiated a
same-sex wedding.
Good wound up in McGuire’s crosshairs for backing Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis for the White House a year ago over former president
Donald Trump, now the party’s presumptive nominee. McGuire, an unswerving Trump loyalist, says the endorsement was a betrayal. It also was an opportunity — for McGuire, a serial congressional candidate, and for mainstream Republicans tired of Good gumming up the works in Washington.
Allies of ousted House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and moderate interest groups have poured more than $4 million into
TV ads branding Good a “backstabber” and “MAGA traitor.”