Congresswoman Barbara Comstock is not the conservative we hoped she would be when we endorsed her in 2014. The citizens of Virginia’s 10th Congressional District deserve a true conservative that they should have had all along.
Conservative First is once again upholding one of our stated commitments by withdrawing our support for Representative Barbara Comstock, the congresswoman from Virginia’s 10th Congressional District due to her extremely poor voting record in addition to her failure to implement and advance a conservative agenda inside the U.S. House of Representatives.
We endorsed Ms. Comstock during her 2014 campaign to replace the retiring Frank Wolf because we thought she would bring a fresh voice to Washington D.C. after Wolf’s 17 terms in office. We believed Comstock’s conservative rhetoric and viewed her as an outside the beltway conservative voice replacing an entrenched D.C. insider.
However, in fewer than four years it is apparent that Rep. Comstock is not that voice we and the voters in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District hope she would be. She represents a district still knee-deep in the swamp, both in proximity and its influence. For this reason, Rep. Comstock finds herself on Conservative First’s 2018 Target List.
Through her actions and voting record, Comstock appears to be nothing more than an opportunist, taking advantage of a congressional district which has been a safe district for right of center candidates. Her behavior once in Washington reflects that of a person who is driven more by personal ambition rather than following a truly conservative path which may sometimes alienate her from the crowd she seems so desperate to ingratiate herself with.
Speaking of her voting record, there are too many positions to list in this space that highlight how she was on the wrong side of the roll call inside the House but here are a few: voted for the Import/Export Bank reauthorization bill, voted for the 2015 $1.1 trillion Omnibus spending bill, voted to fund Planned Parenthood, and most recently she voted for the outrageous $1.3 trillion spending bill in March of this year. We could list many more instances.
It now appears that Rep. Comstock can expect some heavy political artillery in the fall of 2018 from the left as they have targeted this seat in their plan retake control of the House of Representatives. Conservative First is hoping that she will not have an opportunity to defend the seat, and that a limited-government conservative emerges to challenge her in the primary.
With our endorsement of Barbara Comstock in 2014, we took a chance that a conservative would begin a new era of representation in the district. Now in her fourth year in office, she hasn’t lived up to our expectations and is considered a strong reliable vote for the establishment at best, and the liberal wing of the House at worst.
