Former Virginia GOP congressman faces tough comeback odds

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Former Republican Rep. Scott Taylor of Virginia has been coy about his political comeback plans after losing his seat in 2018. It turns out, he has a good reason for doing so.

Taylor, 40, a former member of Virginia’s General Assembly, first won election to Congress in 2016. But two years later, the former Navy SEAL lost his seat to Democratic challenger Elaine Luria, an Annapolis graduate and 20-year Navy veteran, by 2 percentage points. That made Taylor one of three Virginia Republicans to lose reelection when Democrats took the House majority that year.

Taylor had been running for the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Warner in 2020. Taylor now instead reportedly wants to run for his old House seat but has kept quiet publicly. That’s due to an old ballot-access controversy sure to flare up again if he runs.

Taylor, in 2018, got put on the defensive in his race against Luria amid allegations that some of his campaign staffers were involved in a signature-forging petition scheme aimed at persuading a third-party candidate, Shaun Braun, to run as an independent. Brown previously ran against Taylor in 2016 as a Democrat.

Taylor’s Twitter feed has made no mention of a rematch against Luria. His only indirect mention of Luria, 44, is a retweet of a Dec. 7 Virginia Beach resident critical of the Virginia freshman Democratic lawmaker.

Campaign finance reports show four of Taylor’s staffers identified in civil court proceedings were paid as recently as mid-September, according to Talking Points Memo. That suggests Taylor, in whatever political comeback bid he launched, was still associated professional purveyors of questionable, possibly illegal activity. One of these staffers, The VIrginian Pilot reported back in May, was indicted.

A spokesman for the former congressman told the Virginia Mercury in October 2018 that the campaign staffers who were accused of forging the petition signatures are no longer on his campaign.

The 2nd District encompasses all of Accomack, Northampton, and York counties, all of the cities of Virginia Beach and Williamsburg, and parts of the cities of Norfolk and Hampton. In 2016, President Trump beat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the district 48%-45%. But like much of Virginia, the area has been shifting blue since.

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