By Heather Michon
Correspondent
With the November elections now just seven weeks away, candidates for Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District participated in their first joint virtual forum on Wednesday (Sept. 9).
The event, sponsored by the Senior Statesmen of Virginia, drew nearly 1,000 people.
During the hour-long conversation, Democrat Cameron Webb and Republican Bob Good talked about their backgrounds and their individual visions for the District.
Webb, who attended the University of Virginia for both medical and law school, said his upbringing had led him to a life of public service. He said his medical practice has shown him “that being a healer is more than just being a doctor, being a physician–it means leaning into the issues that make our patients sick.”
Good, a graduate of Liberty University who also served as the school’s athletic director, said that growing up in a lower-income family had instilled him with a strong work ethic, along with “a real sense of comparison and a generous spirit to those who are less fortunate.”
Both candidates agreed that residents of the Fifth District–which stretches from Fauquier County in Northern Virginia down to the North Carolina border–have varying ideologies, yet still want many of the same things: jobs, education, security, access to broadband.
But the candidates differed widely in their approach, with Webb positioning himself as a “consensus-builder” who would work across the aisle to come up with bipartisan solutions to the issues facing society, and Good describing himself as a “limited-government guy–a deficit hawk if you will,” who believed that competition was the solution to many issues.
Throughout the hour, Good sought to cast Webb as part of the “radical socialist left,” claiming Webb had been endorsed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Vice Presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“If [Webb] is elected, he would do everything in his power to stop President Trump’s agenda, or, God forbid, to enact the Biden/Harris agenda, if President Trump is not reelected,” said Good in his opening statement.
“He and I have a very different view for the future of America and the direction of our country.”
Webb repeatedly pushed back against Good, saying he had not been endorsed by Senator Sanders or others, and rebuffing Good’s insistence that he supported the Green New Deal and Medicare For All.
A video of the forum has been posted online at http://seniorstatesmen.org/.
