McGuire wins election to Fifth District 

For the fourth time in ten years, Virginia’s Fifth District will be represented by someone else in the lower house of the United States Congress. 

Republican State Senator John McGuire III has defeated Democrat Gloria Tinsley Witt with 57.35 percent of the vote to 42.2 percent.  

“Thanks to God, it feels like ‘morning in America!’,” McGuire posted to his Facebook page Wednesday morning. “At sunrise, I thanked voters in Lynchburg, Virginia.”

McGuire also said he cannot wait to get to work. The Republicans have taken the U.S. Senate but control of the U.S. House of Representative has still not been determined with 410 out of 435 races called. As of this publication, Republicans have 211 seats to 199 for Democrats.  

McGuire announced his candidacy last November just days after winning election to Senate District 10 because he thought incumbent Bob Good was not sufficiently loyal to Trump. He narrowly won in the Republican primary. 

The victory means there will need to be a special election to fill the seat. 

McGuire carried 21 out of the 24 localities in the Fifth District with Witt having majorities in Albemarle, Charlottesville, and Danville. Fluvanna County went for McGuire with 54.51 percent of the vote. 

A small sliver of Albemarle County is within Virginia’s 7th Congressional District which went overall to Democrat Eugene Vindaman. However, 24 of the 33 voters in Albemarle went for Republican Derrick Anderson.

Vindaman had a narrow victory with 50.94 percent of the vote in the 7th District or 195,340 votes at press time. 

In the United States Senate race, Democrat Tim Kaine won election to an additional term with 54.05 percent of the vote over Republican Hung Cao. At publication time, that’s 2,302,734 votes to 1,950,099 votes. 

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