VA-06: On Saturday, Del. Ben Cline won the GOP nomination for this very red open Shenandoah Valley seat at the party convention, which was held in lieu of a primary. Cline defeated Republican National Committee Member Cynthia Dunbar, the former head of a right-wing textbook company, 52-39 on the first and only convention ballot. Cline's win came hours after a third candidate, Rockingham County Circuit Court Clerk Chaz Haywood, announced he was dropping out of the race and backing Cline.
The GOP contest to succeed retiring Rep. Bob Goodlatte has been nasty for months. In January, the Dunbar supporters successfully convinced the 6th District Republican Party Committee to only allow one round of voting at the convention, which would mean that the candidate earning a bare plurality of delegate support would win the GOP nomination outright. To argue their case, a Dunbar ally argued that an attorney in DC had supposedly had been recruited to run by a group called Anybody But Dunbar. The story went that this attorney had been instructed to campaign as normal until a few rounds into voting at the convention, when he would then throw his support to Cline.
Cline was miffed by all this, and he argued that the rules change was being done just to hurt him. In March, the state GOP overruled the district party and announced that the delegates would decide the convention rules. The delegates ended up deciding to allow multiple ballots, though Cline's win in the first round made the whole thing moot in the end.
This seat backed Donald Trump 60-35, and even Ed Gillespie carried it 60-39 last year as he was losing the race for governor 54-45, so it's very unlikely to be competitive in the fall. And while Democrats will be looking for any opportunity to pick up the state House seat that would end the GOP's 51-49 majority in the chamber, Cline's district backed Trump by a nasty 64-31.