On Saturday, Republican leaders in the Fifth Congressional District are holding a convention to nominate a candidate. And it could knock Representative Denver Riggleman out of his job.
A same-sex marriage and privacy issues are imperiling the first term Congressman.
Denver Riggleman isn’t your typical Republican. When I arrived at his family’s whiskey distillery in Afton a couple weekends ago, the congressman was struggling to tighten a tarp over the patio area.
The family’s Silverback Distillery sits in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. While Riggleman’s a Congressman he’s also a whiskey slinger. Well, actually that’s mostly his wife, Christine’s, game. While he politics in Washington, she’s usually malting, mashing or fermenting whiskey with their adult daughters.
Not this year. As I enter their facility there are around 250 industrial sized bottles of hand sanitizer. Christine is exhausted, yet energized as she explains how they turned their distillery into a hand sanitizer factory in the midst of this global coronavirus pandemic. “This is what we call our triage unit now," she explains. "This is our tasting room we normally have, you know, bars open and you know customers in here but now it's filled with bottles and bottles have sanitation orders to pick up.”
Christine’s husband – the Congressman – is used to negotiating with power brokers in Washington. But on the family’s 50 acres in Afton, Riggleman transforms into a bouncer, of sorts. “80% of customers are great. Don't get me wrong, but 20% I would say yesterday and especially the weekend before, there certainly was tension they were angry that they had to social distance or angry about our people wearing masks. Think about that.”
But Saturday Riggleman’s not playing bouncer: He’s trying to not get bounced. The freshman Republican’s being challenged in a GOP nominating convention by Liberty University athletics’ staffer and fundraiser, Bob Good. Good challenged Riggleman after the congressman officiated a same sex marriage, which begs the question: What is today’s Republican Party – all fiscal issues? Or still social conservative issues?
Riggleman dismisses the purity test. “The only purity thing I have in my life is my family, my wife and kids," Riggleman says. "But as far as everything else, you know, when you've been military been around the world, you own a distillery. You'd like to have fun. I'm not gonna pass a purity test. But I want to pass a goodness test.”
A top staffer for Good told me he’s not doing interviews this week, and they refused to make his campaign manager or a surrogate available. But on his homepage former Congressman Tom Garrett, who held the 5th District seat before Riggleman, is listed as a top supporter, so I called him up. Turns out, he’s not that big of a fan of Good. More so he opposes Riggleman’s stance on privacy issues and surveillance of American’s phone and digital footprints.
For Garrett, the race isn’t about social issues at all. “I don't care about gay marriage. I have my own beliefs on what constitutes a marriage but the thing with me is what is the role of government And the role of government isn't to tell people what they can what decisions they can make in their personal life,” Garrett says.
Riggleman was a military mission planner, and prizes security – he oversaw bombing missions in Afghanistan and elsewhere after 9-11. But security isn’t a good enough excuse to invade American’s privacy for Garrett. “Do the people work for the government of this government work for the people?”
Those feel like barbs to Riggleman. “I’ve never thought that my worst fights would be in my own party,” he admits.
Riggleman says he’s fine with a primary; just not a convention stacked with what he calls GOP operatives. “It's not like this is enough, right? A pandemic, being a minority in Congress, convention, you know, against things that I despise, like corruption, pay to play politics, the things that I thought were sort of theoretical or real. And I think that should scare the hell out of people," Riggleman says. "And I'm going to fight whether I win or lose.”
No matter the outcome Saturday, Riggleman’s still got the family distillery to fall back on. "Actually, it's been refreshing. People know me when I come in here. And there are people who come in here and want to talk politics, but we actually - I deflect them off, like, ‘Hey, we're in a, we're in a good space right here, you're in a safe zone.’”
Democrats will pick a nominee in a primary on June 23rd.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.