Meet your congressional representative candidates: Donald McEachin and Leon Benjamin

PETERSBURG — It's deja vu all over again.

This year's race for the Fourth Congressional District is a rematch of a 2020 content to which the defeated candidate never conceded and still maintains two years later that it was rigged. Three-term Democratic incumbent Rep. Donald McEachin once again squares off against Richmond pastor and GOP hopeful Leon Benjamin.

The last time these two men faced off, McEachin won with 61% of the vote. However, Benjamin, who led much of the early part of the race only to see that lead evaporate and then reversed, never threw in the towel and threatened to take the election into court. That never materialized.

Leon Benjamin

Born and raised in Richmond, Leon Benjamin served as a Navy combat veteran during the Gulf Wars, and is now a senior pastor at New Life Harvest Church. He served as the chairman for the Richmond GOP in 2018, and was a surrogate for minority outreach for the Trump administration. Benjamin ran in 2020 against McEachin but lost, with McEachin taking 61 percent and Benjamin taking 38 percent.

Benjamin hopes that it will be different this time around.

Benjamin is running on closing the borders, protecting the 2nd Amendment and the right to bear arms, protecting life, and lowering taxes and inflation.

"Babies ought to be born from the womb to the tomb," said Benjamin. He believes that the country has moved away from the Constitution and that America has become a uni-party system where politicians refuse to work across the aisle.

"We can agree on certain things," said Benjamin. "We can agree that the people should not be paying high taxes. How to do that then is why we should come to the table." Benjamin says that Democrats and Republicans should be able to work together on things they agree on, even though both parties may have differing ideas on how to get there.

In order to tackle the rising gas prices, Benjamin believes that lifting regulations for gas companies to drill is an immediate solution, and being self-sufficient with what our country produces would be better in the long run.

"We have almost doubled our gas prices and its going up higher now because we've lost our energy independence...cutting off the Keystone pipeline, putting in loopholes and regulations for our own energy supply to not be tapped into."

"We need to get back to being America first. And when we can take care of our families here, protect our families, public safety, all that deals with our economy," said Benjamin.

Benjamin says that his opponent has not earned another term.

"I believe he has not earned that term by just showing what policies he stood with and what has happened to the people over these last two to six years," Benjamin said, "and I'm asking for their vote for those in the Fourth Congressional District, to look at that and allow new leadership to come in place."

Donald McEachin

McEachin, a 61-year-old attorney from Richmond, has been in Congress since 2017. He has faced three Republican challengers in that time, but Benjamin is his first "rematch."

McEachin pulls no punches in his criticism of Benjamin, calling him an "election denier" and walking in the footsteps of former President Donald Trump, who continues to assert that he did not lose the 2020 presidential election legally.

In the 2020 campaign, Benjamin was leading McEachin by 12,000 votes late into the evening, but by midnight when three more precincts came in, McEachin had erased that lead into a virtual tie. Counting the votes moved into the next morning, and by then McEachin pushed ahead wound up winning the seat with 61% of the vote and a 90,000-ballot difference.

However, Benjamin never conceded the race, maintaining election corruption. To this day, he still has not conceded the 2020 race.

It was for that reason that the two never met for debate or any joint forum this election season.

The McEachin camp sent Benjamin a letter that read in part, "Until you accept the results of the 2020 election, concede the 2020 congressional race and acknowledge President Biden's victory, I will make no joint appearance with you." Benjamin often made note of that refusal at various campaign appearances around the area.

"My opponent is an election denier," McEachin said in an interview this week. "He makes facts up to engage his narrative."

Petersburg benefitted considerably from federal funding over the past couple of years, including a $16.8 million budget item to upgrade the Poor Creek water and sewer system in the southern part of the city. McEachin said he was hopeful that Congress would pass its next operating budget this year. That budget, he said, includes funding for such needs in Petersburg as an upgrade to the E-911 emergency system.

"Petersburg and I have an open line of communication," McEachin said.

2022 was a red-letter year for McEachin both politically and personally when the Defense Department voted to rename Fort Lee in honor of retired Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg and the late Charity Adams, the first Black woman in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and the commander of the first World War II battalion with Black women as its only members. Gregg, now 95, began his military career at Fort Lee and rose to become one of the highest-ranked Black officers in the Army. There are many tributes to him throughout the post.

Asked to rank the renaming among his Washington achievements, McEachin said that is hard to do because the topic to him is very emotional. His father and Gregg both enlisted at Fort Lee and shared a lifelong friendship up until McEachin's father died.

"Gregg was a man I grew up with," McEachin said. "I don't know if I can rank it because it's so emotional to me."

Joyce Chu, an award-winning investigative journalist, is the Social Justice Watchdog Reporter for The Progress Index. Contact her with comments, concerns, or story-tips at Jchu1@gannett.com or on Twitter @joyce_speaks.

Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist and daily news coach for USA TODAY Network's Atlantic Region which includes Virginia. He is based in Petersburg, Virginia. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: The 4th Congressional DIstrict race is a rematch of 2020