Virginia’s 5th District candidates sit down for individual interviews ahead of debate

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - The candidates vying for Virginia’s 5th District seat are weighing in on some big issues. They sat down with members of the regional chambers, including the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, for individual interviews.

The chambers developed the questions beforehand, and generally asked both candidates the same. They were asked about their ability to be bipartisan.

“I would often get the question, why don’t you reach across and I’ve asked them - tell me what the democrat party is doing with the total power they have, and what I should be helping them do. So that is a big part of it. I will not help this democrat party further ruin the country,” Republican incumbent Bob Good said.

Fifth District Candidate Democrat Josh Throneburg took a different approach to the question.

“I understand the kinds of values and, and determinations that kind of come out of both, and one of my deep hopes as a member of Congress is to be someone that is just very solution oriented, that is willing to work with anyone of goodwill, who wants to improve the lives of the people that I represent,” Throneburg said.

Good spoke about what he was most proud of from his term - returning $14 million in service casework to people in the 5th District.

“They were owed money by the IRS, the DEA, Social Security Administration, Medicare or some other federal agency, and they reached out to their congressional office for help,” Rep. Good said.

He took a strong stance opposing illegal immigration,

“We need to require patriotic assimilation. I think we ought to require them to learn the English language. Think about what’s happening today. We are flooding our schools with millions of illegal alien children who don’t speak English and our schools are required to teach them in their language. How is that in the best interest of the country?” Rep. Good said.

Throneburg says one of his top priorities is expanding access to healthcare.

“It would be awesome if universal healthcare was there because, as an employer, it solves one of the problems that - if I knew that - then I’d have money to invest in other things. I want to help employers as much as I possibly can and obviously help them help employees. So I want to support any legislation that is going to increase access to healthcare, and help small businesses afford that, provide it, put it forward to their employees,” Throneburg said.

They both were asked how they felt about raising the corporate tax above 21%. While Throneburg said he did not support raising it now, he may not always be anti-tax.

“I also am a common sense candidate. We have to be able to afford the things that we spend and so if we have to raise taxes in order to afford certain things, let’s say we were putting universal health care in and we needed to raise taxes a little bit to be able to provide coverage for that, I‘m not always going to be tax opposed,” Throneburg said. “What I really, really want is to make good decisions, spend the money that we need to spend, and not to not to waste...not to throw money away, that we have to raise taxes to pay for I think there’s a huge value for me in fiscal responsibility. ”

Good says he’s against raising the corporate tax.

“I am hyper anti-tax. Quite frankly, we do not have a revenue problem in this country, we have a spending problem. The spending, I’m sure that we’ll talk more about that as we go forward to questions, but I mean $31 trillion national debt, the greatest percent of debt relative to our GDP since World War Two, it’s causing massive inflation. It’s bankrupting our future,” Rep. Good said.

The candidates will have an in person debate at Hampden Sydney College Wednesday October 26 at 7 pm. It will also be livestreamed.

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