Freshman Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman lost his party’s nomination for reelection on Saturday after angering social conservatives in his district when he officiated a gay wedding last summer.
Riggleman’s district, Virginia’s 5th, stretches from northern Virginia to the North Carolina border.
The contest was a “party convention” and not a primary. Riggleman, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, has accused a small number of party insiders of fixing the contest against him by opting for the convention format for the contest, which tends to favor more conservative candidates.
The winner of the contest was Bob Good, a former official at the athletics department of Virginia’s Liberty University. He has pledged to restore “Judeo-Christian” values to Congress, is a hardliner on immigration and believes English should be the official language of the U.S.