‘I’m deeply embarrassed that Peter Strzok’s career was ruined by my father’s political grandstanding…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The son of retiring House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte has his sight set on flipping his father’s seat from red to blue in northwest Virginia’s Sixth District.
Bobby Goodlatte issued a series of tweets earlier in the week repudiating his father’s role in the firing of senior FBI official Peter Strzok and announcing that he had given the maximum amount to the Democratic candidate vying for his father’s open seat.
“I’m deeply embarrassed that Peter Strzok’s career was ruined by my father’s political grandstanding. That committee hearing was a low point for Congress,” he posted on Twitter.
The younger Goodlatte also weighed in on the Twitter battle between President Donald Trump and Omarosa Manigault-Newman, the former “Apprentice” contestant turned White House staffer.
“Our President just called a woman a dog. It seems like every day he further lowers the dignity of our highest office,” he said, followed by a frowning emoji.
According to the junior Goodlatte’s LinkedIn page, he graduated in 2008 from Duke University with a computer science degree and spent four years as a product designer at Facebook.
He later attempted to launch a startup app called Openvote, which invited users to declare their position on political issues.
He currently considers himself a professional ‘angel investor’ based in San Francisco.
Bobby Goodlatte’s Twitter footprint includes nearly 10,000 posts dating back to February 2017 and a growing follower count around 50,000.
While his tweets have consistently attacked the president and espoused liberal positions, a cursory examination revealed no other postings directly critical of his father.
Although the senior Goodlatte has held his seat for 25 years in the historically conservative district (which includes the cities of Roanoke, Lynchburg and Harrisonburg, and much of the Shenandoah Valley), Democrats in their mission to reclaim the House of Representatives have seen Virginia as especially vulnerable due to demographic changes.
Republicans in the commonwealth saw substantial losses in 2017 state-level elections, which nearly cost them the state House of Delegates and included the election of the first openly transgender state representative, who unseated an incumbent Republican in a nearby district.
According to election handicapper Scott Rasmussen, Republican Del. Ben Cline remains the strong favorite in the contest against Democratic challenger Jennifer Lewis.