The Rise of Leslie Cockburn in Virginia's 5th Congressional District

Republican Congressman Tom Garrett's surprise announcement on Monday that he would not seek a second term because he's an alcoholic has certainly boosted the candidacy of Democrat Leslie Cockburn, a first-time candidate for office who was already looking like a winner.

Leslie Cockburn

Cockburn had cleared the field of her Democratic rivals. The Democrats of the Virginia 5th District opted for a nominating caucus of counties rather than a primary (they can do that in Virginia), and Cockburn had most of those counties behind her. The sprawling 5th District takes in all or part of 21 counties, from the North Carolina border almost up to Maryland. Her leading Democratic opponent, Roger Dean Huffstetler, who'd raised over a million $$ himself, dropped out of the race a couple of days before the May 5th caucus and endorsed Cockburn:

“Democrats in the Fifth District have made it loud and clear through local caucuses that they want Leslie Cockburn to be our nominee to take on Tom Garrett this fall,” Huffstetler said in a statement. “Leslie worked extremely hard to earn that distinction, achieving viability in all 23 localities and winning an outright majority of delegates. She and her team are to be congratulated on executing on their strategy with precision and enthusiasm.”

Roger Dean Huffstetler is a class act, and he himself, an ex-Marine, looked like a winner back in January when he announced. Leslie Cockburn didn't get into the race until July, and she swept everyone away, including Huffstetler. Sic transit semper fi.

So what is it about Leslie Cockburn? She's something of a celebrity, married to Irish journalist and filmmaker Andrew Cockburn (who is also, incidentally, an old Russian expert; he wrote The Threat – Inside the Soviet Military Machine in 1982). Leslie and Andrew's daughter Olivia Wilde is a successful actress. Leslie has been a top investigative journalist, an award-winning producer for CBS's 60 Minutes. She has won two Emmys, two George Polk Awards, two Columbia Dupont journalism awards, and the Robert F. Kennedy Award. John Lewis, civil rights leader and dean of Georgia’s congressional delegation, has offered to come and campaign for her.

"In 2009, Leslie Cockburn directed and co-produced (with husband Andrew Cockburn) her first feature documentary for theatrical release. American Casino relates the story of the origins, progress and consequences of the subprime mortgage disaster that led to the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Beginning filming in January 2008, Cockburn laid bare both the financial machinations and miscalculations on Wall Street that produced the disaster as well as its effects on an array of Baltimore homeowners struggling to stay afloat. The film premiered at New York's Tribeca Film Festival in April 2009." (Thank you, Wikipedia)

So there's some talent there. And smarts. And connections.

She's gonna need all of that. Last I saw, the 5th District of Virginia (sorta like the 5th District of NC) was rated "safely Republican," and it could be a natural dam against any blue wave. But Cockburn is campaigning on kitchen table issues, like health care and education, and she's unapologetic about her environmentalism. She's come out in opposition to the Atlantic Coast pipeline, which would cut through productive farms and small businesses (like the Four Corners Farm in Franklin County) to transit fracked-gas to North Carolina.

Meanwhile, the Republican executives of the 5th District have to choose a replacement on the ballot for Tom Garrett, somebody who will probably be nowhere as prominent as Leslie Cockburn.

Another Marine Running as a Democratic Insurgent

Roger Dean Huffstetler is running for the US House from the 5th District of Virginia. He inspires confidence.





The 5th District of Virginia was gerrymandered to benefit a Republican. It includes the city of Danville but skirts Roanoke and Lynchburg and stretches on up the largely rural eastern slope of the Blue Ridge to Warrenton. Charlottesville and the University of Virginia is very much in the district.

Most observers consider it reliably Republican, but it was represented by blue dog Democrat Virgil Goode for years, who switched parties to Republican and promptly lost to Democratic progressive Tom Perriello in 2008, who in turn lost the seat to a Republican tea partier in 2010. It's been Republican ever since but with a lingering tendency to "swing." We have relatives and friends in the Virginia 5th, in Amherst and Nelson counties (where there's still some very fine moonshine produced).

Who is the current Republican incumbent?
Tom Garrett, a legislator without much of a profile other than being an enthusiastic member of the hard-conservative "freedom caucus," chose to raise his profile in 2017 by meeting with the organizer of the Charlottesville white supremacy rally shortly before that event led to the death of a young woman.

Tom Garrett
Photo Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Garrett was soon claiming that he didn't know the political identity of the man he met with, but the cat was already out of the bag: Garrett is a coddler of white supremacists, much like the president he wants to be close to.

As a freedom caucus member, Garrett is currently joining in on the trashing of the FBI -- the real enemy of the people! -- and helping lay the groundwork that any indictment of the president by the Mueller investigation must be bogus because of a "secret society" of Comey allies (who nevertheless managed to throw the election to Trump by reopening an investigation into Clinton emails just days before the 2016 election. That's one inept secret society!).

In other words, Garrett is a conservative tool and an idiot, while Roger Dean Huffstetler is not.