This is a quick diary.
Tom Garrett has decided to not run for re-election for the 5th Congressional District in Virginia. Believe me, I want to laugh and jump for joy. But I’ll refrain. Nevertheless, I’m dancing inside.
Something was up, as we all saw this past week. First this tweet:
We went from “no way in heck” — as in he would absolutely run again — to today’s declaration that he will not run again. This comes after a tumultuous week.
Of course there was a lot of stuff coming out. Such as how he treated his staff as personal servants:
Virginia Rep. Tom Garrett and his wife turned the congressman’s staff into personal servants, multiple former employees to the freshman Republican told POLITICO — assigning them tasks from grocery shopping to fetching the congressman’s clothes to caring for their pet dog, all during work hours.
POLITICO has spoken with four former staffers who detailed a deeply dysfunctional office in which the congressman and his wife, Flanna, often demanded that staff run personal errands outside their typical congressional duties. The couple called on staff to pick up groceries, chauffeur Garrett’s daughters to and from his Virginia district, and fetch clothes that the congressman forgot at his Washington apartment. They were even expected to watch and clean up after Sophie, their Jack Russell-Pomeranian mix, the aides said.
Snip
The behind-the-scenes turmoil boiled over Tuesday evening, when Garrett’s chief of staff, Jimmy Keady, abruptly parted ways with the congressman. His exit, multiple sources say, came amid a dispute with Garrett over the couple’s alleged misuse of official resources. Multiple sources raised the issue with the congressman, and senior staffers tried to rectify the situation repeatedly.
and then today —
Garrett made the announcement Monday in a video recorded in Richmond. Watch the full announcement in the video above.
In the video he says people who know him well are aware he's an alcoholic, but making that public was a struggle. He also says "sometimes winning means knowing where your priorities should be."
Last week Garrett held a news conference denying reports he was thinking of not seeking re-election.
Garrett represents Virginia's 5th District, which runs from Northern Virginia to the North Carolina line. Party officials will pick a replacement candidate in coming days.
Watch the viddie in the above link. Seriously, what a bloviator!
In response —
Leslie Cockburn become the Democratic nominee for the 5th district on May 5th.
Journalists who work in Washington seldom go into politics, Cockburn said, as they have seen how the sausage is made, so to speak.
When Donald Trump was elected president, however, everything changed for Cockburn.
“Once I went on the Women’s March, and once my local party chairs asked whether I would consider running for Congress, I decided that now is the time,” she said. “I was very offended by Trump as a woman and very concerned about him as a former journalist because he attacked journalists as the enemy of the people. That’s attacking the foundation of the Fourth Estate. We have no democracy without it. I feel very strongly about that.”
Cockburn spent three months traveling the district to learn its needs – no easy task, considering that the 5th District is larger than New Jersey. Link.
Cockburn decided to run after Trump was elected, as many women did across the country, and right here in Virginia. And what happened in Charlottesville on August 12/2017 was also integral to her declaring herself as a candidate to take on Tom Garrett:
It was a cold day in February on Capitol Hill. I was with one of the great civil-rights heroes of our time. Congressman John Lewis has gravitas. He can fill a room with electricity. And when he spoke to me, passionately and directly, any doubts I had about the months I’d spent campaigning simply vanished. When I saw what happened in Charlottesville, he confided, it made me cry. I couldn’t believe what the president of the United States said. You have to get up there and lead. You have what it takes to do that. You will have my help, and you will have my support. I realized, right then, that it wasn’t all folly, this idea of running for Congress. In rural Virginia. In a district with Charlottesville at its heart. Challenging three Democratic rivals and then the far-right Freedom Caucus—and the inevitable blizzard of dark money that would descend upon the race. John said he would come with me to walk the streets of Danville, where he had marched in 1963. My campaign was now part of something bigger.
My decision to run as a candidate for Virginia’s 5th District (with its 440,000 voters spread across 308 precincts) traces back to a Democratic Party breakfast of buttermilk biscuits and country ham in the spring of 2017. We were gathered at the firehouse in Washington, Virginia, known as “little Washington” (because big Washington is only 90 minutes down the road). It was April and the coffee was bitter. I was watching our Democratic candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates, Tristan Shields, belting out a verse of the 1961 hit “Stand by Me.” Tristan had chosen to sing his stump speech rather than speak it. It was a bold decision. Interspersed among lyrics like When the night has come and the land is dark, he had added the odd bullet point, I support re-districting, delivered in a low murmur.
I’m wondering who will be the running as the Republican candidate now….. *looking around...*
UPDATE--—
And Lowkell thinks:
Personally, my money is on either Vogel or Boneta as the likely frontrunner to replace Garrett on the ballot. We already know a lot about Vogel – none of it good (other than her getting trounced by Democrat Justin Fairfax) – since she ran for Lt. Governor last year. To give you an idea of what we’re dealing with when it comes to Boneta, see below for some photos of her with a variety of far-right figures. Also see this article, which talks about a September 2016 event with Trump running mate Mike Pence “headlin[ing] ‘Pumpkins and Politics,’ a celebration of agriculture, property rights and conservative values at Martha Boneta’s Liberty Farm in Paris.” Charming, eh?