Republican Senate candidate Eddie Garcia is hoping to unseat Tim Kaine – the nice way

NORTH CHESTERFIELD, Va. − Eddie Garcia greeted the line of families that stretched out of the door of the Jefferson Davis Flea Market on a Saturday morning about a week before Christmas. Hundreds of residents from around North Chesterfield brought their children to meet Santa Claus and get a free toy at the market's fifth annual Christmas Celebration.

Garcia shook hands with both parents and their children and held brief conversations with families before he motioned to the table behind him, where his wife, Veronica, and their two daughters offered information and assistance to folks interested in registering to vote.

“What we’re trying to do is get name recognition to the entire community,” he said. “We’re trying to make it as easy as possible, to expand as many people to vote as possible because that’s the key to a good democracy.”

Garcia, new to Republican campaigns, launched his bid in January to unseat incumbent U.S. Democratic Senator Tim Kaine. He knew he wouldn’t be successful in defeating Kaine in a swing state unless he shrugged off the Republican primary playbook. Instead, he comes with a pro-unity, pro-working-class message that he hopes will draw moderate Democrats and Republicans to support him in the primary and eventually topple the political giant Kaine has become in Virginia.

It's a strategy that comes as several Republican presidential candidates who have tried to tout unity have exited the race for the White House. Former Vice President Mike Pence sold kindness on the campaign trail after breaking with former President Donald Trump, but he ended his campaign in October. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who has previously called himself a biblical leader, ended his presidential bid last month .

Unconcerned with the possibility that some of the people he helped register earlier this month may end up voting against him in the primary or the general election, Garcia said he hopes his message has resonated with voters, regardless of their political inclination.

Garcia looked at the line of families, most Latino or African American and all with wide-eyed and excited small children, that stretched out of the door of the flea market.

“I can tell you Tim Kaine isn’t coming here, sitting senators aren’t coming here, but that’s why I’m confident we’re going to win,” he said.

Campaigning at the flea market

North Chesterfield sits in the northern tip of Virginia’s 4th Congressional District, which Democratic Rep. Don McEachin won by a significant margin in 2022. An industrial corridor south of Richmond, North Chesterfield is home to a DuPont plant, the Phillip Morris campus and a natural gas and oil-fueled power plant, among other chemical and product manufacturers.

Trailer parks, motels and abandoned strip malls line the main road south of Virginia’s capitol city on the way to the flea market, where the main issues on residents' minds were jobs and the ability to maintain a steady income to support their families.

Kelvin Simmons, an undecided and first-time voter in line to visit Santa Claus with his children, said he hasn’t seen any other Senate candidates visit North Chesterfield, or the flea market, which has become a community gathering space as well as a place for small businesses to launch. It’s because of this approach, Simmons said, that he believes Garcia has a shot at unseating Kaine.

“I think he wants help for all of us people out here, so I feel he might be good for it,” Simmons said. “He’s here for the people.”

Others were more skeptical of Garcia’s ability to defeat the incumbent. Kaine started his career as a fair housing lawyer. He rose in Virginia’s political ranks from city council member to mayor of Richmond, then to lieutenant governor and governor. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012 by a 5-point margin and became former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s running mate during the 2016 presidential election. He was reelected to the Senate in 2018 by a 16-point margin.

“He can forget that,” Brian Reid, a volunteer at the flea market, said of Garcia’s effort to unseat Kaine. “Until Tim Kaine has decided he’s going to retire, you can forget it. He has deep roots in Virginia, and he has a proven track record.”

Garcia grew up in rural Texas, where his father was a ranch hand and his mother worked at a grocery store. A 22-year Army veteran and former ranger with 6 combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Garcia spent a cumulative three years in combat zones. Over those three years, Garcia saw car bombs at the gate of the base where he was stationed, dodged mortar rounds, and lost two close friends killed in action.

“I’ve seen political leaders and military brass advocate for trillions of dollars to continue conflicts overseas that they knew America didn’t have the strategy or the political will to win,” he said.

“And to return home and see working people from places that I come from further behind today than 22 years ago, to see veterans committing suicide in skyrocketing numbers, to see chaos at local school board meetings, violent riots, the humanitarian crisis at the border and our political leaders stoking this cultural divide that looks increasingly similar to the sectarian divide overseas is simply unacceptable.”

Garcia retired from the Pentagon in 2022 and has spent the last 12 months crisscrossing the state as a candidate. As of mid-December, the 42 year old has spoken at more than 160 events in 70 different counties and municipalities to drum up support for his campaign.

Talking unity in the red valley

In early December, Garcia joined a group of Republican Senate candidates to deliver stump speeches for the first time to voters at a Christmas party in a part of Virginia known to politicians and locals as the “red valley.” Most of the pitches, offered to a room roughly 200 attendees at an event hosted by the Augusta County Republican Party, were steeped in hyperbole and divisive rhetoric.

“There was a lot of anger up there,” Eddie Garcia said as he stood at the back of the gymnasium inside of the Weyer’s Cave Community Center, nearly 130 miles away from the Jefferson Davis Flea Market.

Weyers Cave, a community of about 426 households, sits in the middle of the Shenandoah Valley in an area with softly rolling hills and meadows and a mountainous backdrop. Small family farms dot the countryside in the deep-red district that sent Republican Rep. Ben Cline - a House Freedom Caucus member who voted against the certification of the 2020 election - back to Congress with a significant margin of victory in 2022.

Garcia maintained his positive tone and message of unity in his stump speech while weaving in some talk about policy reform. Other candidates' fire-and-brimstone message elicited cheers and applause from the crowd, but Garcia’s focus on policy issues seemed to win out with some.

“I noticed he was the only one who mentioned about protecting the seniors,” Kaylene Seigle, said after the speeches concluded, in reference to a point Garcia made about Medicare. “I know, lord willing, one day I will be a senior and I would like to be protected or to at least enjoy my last years.”

Others were swayed by the crowd.

Manoj and Monika Velumani were undecided prior to the speeches but found themselves supporting Chuck Smith and Johnathan Emord at the end of the night. Smith and Emord, two of the more animated and divisive speakers, made sweeping generalizations about Democrats and socialism and lauded Trump to the delight of the crowd.

“Their speeches were energetic and vibrant,” Manoj Velumani said.

“I think they have a good chance to win,” Monika Velumani said.

Smith, a hard-right candidate, former Marine and current lawyer, narrowly lost the Republican nomination for Virginia Attorney General in 2021. Emord, a constitutional lawyer who lives in Clifton, served as an attorney for the Federal Communications Commission during the Reagan Administration and has authored several books about politics.

Regardless, Garcia, in his signature cowboy hat, belt buckle and jeans, wasn’t discouraged from meeting and shaking the hand of nearly everyone in the room that night.

Small-dollar donations fuel a dark-horse candidacy

Hours before the Christmas party in Weyers Cave and in a suit and tie, Garcia attended the GOP state central committee meeting in a hotel conference room 120 miles away in urban Richmond. He appeared to be the only Republican Senate candidate to attend the open part of the meeting and seemed to know almost every party representative in attendance. His goal was to reestablish those relationships and to introduce himself to new faces.

“I’m a different type of Republican than they’re used to seeing,” he said. “I’m a little bit younger than the ones that have been running in the past, I’m a little more blue collar than people who have run in the past.”

And he’s worked to maintain that image of a Republican dark-horse candidate.

On a chilly Monday evening at the end of November, Garcia stood outside of the Christian Life Academy ahead of a meeting with the Colonial Heights Republican Committee, where he was scheduled to speak. He stood beside his pickup truck, with red “Garcia for Senate” signs sticking out of the back cab, in a suit jacket, tie, belt buckle and jeans, and considered how far his campaign had come since he launched in January.

Over the summer, requests for speaking engagements began to come in unsolicited, his engagement numbers on social media began to climb and he began to see more small-dollar donations, he said. By the end of September, he was the fourth highest fundraiser out of the field of nine Senate candidates, according to data provided by the Virginia Public Access Project.

Michael Beyer, Kaine's campaign communications director, said the senator "looks forward to putting up his record of delivering for Virginia against any Republican who may win the nomination."

Garcia said he's not just any Republican.

“I think that Republicans, Independents and even Democrats – die hard, dye in the wool, blue collar, working, FDR type Democrats, JFK type Democrats are going to be able to look at Tim Kaine and I on the same stage and recognize that one of these guys represents the past and one of them represents the future,” he said.

When asked by a member of the audience at the committee meeting that night if he anticipates Republican leadership in the Senate will support his campaign effort, he responded with a quick no.

“I can’t rely on any of those other people, the RNC, the NRSC, anybody else. They’re not going to give us any money because they’re not going to be able to control me,” he said.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Eddie Garcia hopes to defeat Sen. Tim Kaine as a nice guy Republican