When Virginia congressman Denver Riggleman officiated a same-sex wedding last July, he received many cheers from the LGBTQ community, but he was met with a great deal of pushback from his peers. A year later, Riggleman lost his party’s nomination in the primaries.
Riggleman, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, lost a GOP convention on the 13th to Bob Good, who is a former official in the athletics department at Liberty University. According to ABC, Good won with 58% of the vote. Good’s campaign manager called this “a resounding win.”
When he officiated the wedding of two campaign aides, Anthony LeCounte and Alex Pisciarino, Riggleman made many other Republicans in his district upset, they even passed a vote of no confidence. Some even believed that Riggleman “contradicted his promise to represent the district,” despite same-sex marriage being legal across the nation since 2015. However, he voted against the Equality Act and supported Trump’s transgender military ban. Riggleman stated that he officiated the wedding because he simply wanted to support his friends.
Did he lose just because of his wedding day blues? Riggleman has said that a small group of people were rigging the vote by ballot stuffing and that there were voting irregularities and that the Virginia GOP needs to reevaluate their priorities.
Voting irregularities and ballot stuffing has been reported in multiple counties in the #VA05. Voter fraud has been a hallmark of this nomination process and I will not stand for it. @VA_GOP needs to reevaluate their priorities. We are evaluating all our options at this time.
— Denver Riggleman (@Denver4VA) June 14, 2020
Good retorted with, “that’s what losers say” in response to Riggleman’s allegations. He vows to restore Judeo-Christian values to congress, is tough on immigration, and wants English to be the official language of the United States.
What do you think? Did Riggleman lose because he officiated a same-sex wedding or did Bob Good do a great job getting the right people to vote for him? Stuffing and all?
Source: ABC