Virginia’s fifth district Congressional seat has been the home of several major political figures and leaders since World War II. Men such as Chatham’s Dan Daniel, who became one of the leading conservative Reagan democrats, L.F. Payne, Virgil Good, Robert Hurt, and most recently Denver Riggleman have served in that seat with distinction, as leaders of the region and as men who were well respected inside Washington D.C and the entire country. That seat has been held by Bob Good, who ousted Riggleman in a controversial drive by Lynchburg primary in 2020, in which the latter alleged, involved, “intimidating committee members and paying for votes” as the very “definition of pay-to-play politics, something I have fought against my entire life. When Bob Good can’t intimidate committee members to vote his way, he then tries to pay them off. This blatant pay-for-play scheme goes against any semblance of a fair process and is against everything we stand for as Republicans.”
I don’t know the details about all of that, but what I do know is that the convention was held at Bob Good’s own church!
He felt completely entitled to bring that about.
That’s Bob Good.
Now a challenger is gaining momentum for the 5th District Republican nomination against Mr. Good to be the party’s candidate for Congress.
If you live in Danville or Pittsylvania County and subscribe to the Danville Register last week you finally saw a story that involved Congressman Bob Good coming to Danville in the paper. Since being in office he barely has come down here at all and with growing opposition to him in the upcoming Republican Primary convention he decided he needed to come to Danville for a photo op by touring the Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing Pilot Program at the IALR as no one ever sees him or hears of him doing anything around here. He even got TV station WDBJ to film him and put it on TV. None of the reporters asked him any meaningful questions on that day so it was a huge success for him.
He succeeded in having this coverage make it look like he is doing something, but in reality he not only hasn’t sponsored a single piece of legislation that benefits the fifth district, but hasn’t even asked to get a single project funded in the entire district with a Congressional earmark. He has a strange voting record. He was only one of seven members of the House who voted against bill 1910, which was for funding for Veteran Hospitals.
The legislation he has attached himself to seems to be more about creating controversy than anything else. For instance, right before Russia invaded Ukraine, he co-sponsored a doomed bill to pull all of the aid from Ukraine until a complete border wall between the US and Mexico is built. Such a bill was designed to only gin up emotions and sent an awful message to Putin, showing him weakness and division as he was making his decision to invade. A real legislator would have kept the two issues separate and worked for both. Once Russia invaded, Bob Good then did a Facebook post expressing support for the Ukrainians, pretending like his support of this bill never happened and blaming the entire war on President Biden. Biden ain’t some great leader, but he is not in control of Putin’s decisions.
To me that just shows someone not understanding what is going on in the world.
The bill went nowhere.
What Bob Good has done, though, is close every single constituent Congressional office in the district except one just a few miles from his home in Lynchburg. So, yeah the Danville office is gone. I know that is important, because over twenty years ago I worked as an intern one summer in that office answering the phone when people called. Most of the calls involved veterans and people on disability needing help or people calling about their social security. Some people would have to come to the office for help and I remember some of the business and political leaders in the city and county coming to meet the Congressman too. By closing this office and the others Good has shown what he thinks about that type of work. I don’t understand why he wanted to make it hard to access him or help from his aides. Maybe it just a feeling that he is entitled to the job, so what he thinks are little people don’t matter.
Recently, Bob Good set up a satellite event for people then shut it down at the last second jerking people around.
The elected congressman for my district scheduled office hours at the local library. Bob Good didn’t plan to attend himself. It was scheduled last week for the middle of the day today.
— Kim 🌈 Steger (@That_Kim) May 5, 2022
He canceled it less than 24 hours before it was to happen.
Bob ain’t all that Good.
On May 21, there is going to be a Republican Primary convention at Hampden-Sydney College and his challenger has pledged to re-open those Congressional offices. That alone is reason enough to vote for him, but there are more reasons than that.
For one it is a chance to once again have a leader of distinction in that seat.
Bob Good’s challenger is retired Air Force Colonel Dan Moy, who is the Chairman of the Republican Party in Charlottesville, Virginia. During his service in the military he worked as the assistant to the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as Deputy Military Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. He has the experience and knowledge from that type of background few others have that he can bring to Congress, in a time in which the world situation is now impacting us all.
Perhaps another way to look at this to be more charitable to Bob Good – is that he was the right candidate for Republicans in 2020 and for a time in which Democrats held the majority in Congress, but the Republicans are most likely to win the majority in Congress this November and a different skill set is preferable then. Bob Good beat Cameron Webb 52.4% to 47.3%. That’s a narrow margin for a deeply conservative district and suggests to me that Moy would be a much stronger candidate in the general election in November and in the elections afterwards. There is no guarantee that Good would win again.
Mr. Moy recently did an interview about why he is in the race and his views.
Moy’s campaign also posted a video about his service in Afghanistan.
Colonel Moy wants to also focus on the issues impacting us. “Opioid addiction, drug addiction in the southside of Virginia is still a problem. Broadband access is still a problem in our area. Getting manufacturing and jobs back so our young people don’t leave the 5th district to go elsewhere,” Dan Moy said.
Farming is also key for Southside and today farmers are facing higher fertilizer costs and over-regulation, which is contributing to higher food costs at the grocery store.
One farmer in Pittsylvania County sent a letter this week to convention delegates in support of his campaign.
Of course, it is an uphill climb for anyone to challenge an incumbent, but the Dan Moy campaign has enough growing momentum that it may succeed. There are expected to be 2,000 delegates at the convention so just a small number of people getting on board can make a difference.
If you would like to meet Colonel Dan Moy he will be at South Boston this Saturday at 5:00 PM at the Factory Street Brewing Company on 210 Factory St. That’s May 14, 2022.
-Mike
