The Story:
The Democratic Party’s nominee for the House seat for Virginia’s 5th District, Cameron Webb is a physician and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Virginia. He was also a White House Fellow for the last six months of the presidency of Barack Obama and the first six of that of Donald Trump.
Background:
The district that Webb is running to represent stretches through the Piedmont and Blue Ridge regions of Virginia from the North Carolina border to Fauquier County in the state’s northwest.
Webb is running against Bob Good, who defeated the incumbent, Denver Riggleman, at a contested Republican convention in June. Good is a former athletic director at Liberty University, an evangelical Christian institution associated with conservative politics.
Webb has done unusually well in raising campaign funds for this race. He received $850,000 in donations in the second quarter.
The Thing to Know:
Webb, a Black man, says that when he first approached people about running for this seat, he received a lot of questions about whether the fact that he is Black would generate opposition. He says, “Well, White people like me too.” He concludes that Democrats are overly afraid of “other people’s racism.”
