Eric Cantor teams up with former rival Dave Brat in supporting GOP candidate in former district

Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) officially threw his support behind Republican Nick Freitas in the race for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, joining with his former rival Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) to support the GOP candidate. 

“Nick Freitas has spent his life in service to others and to our nation,” Cantor said in a statement released exclusively to The Hill. “I know that Nick will put the people of Central Virginia first as our next representative and I am proud to endorse his candidacy.”

Cantor is slated to join Freitas’s general election finance committee, along with Brat, who unseated Cantor in the district’s Republican primary in 2014. The development appears to be a show of unity for Freitas. Cantor and his allies long represent the establishment wing of the Republican Party, while Brat raised to prominence as a Tea Party insurgent. 

Another former Republican congressman from the district, Rep. Tom Bliley (Va.), who represented the district for 20 years before Cantor, is also on the committee. 

Freitas, an Army veteran and member of Virginia’s House of Delegates, is challenging freshman Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in the district.

Spanberger narrowly unseated Brat in 2018, winning just over 50 percent of the vote. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the seat as a “toss-up.” Spanberger has raised four times as much as Freitas, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Spanberger is one of 30 Democrats who flipped a district in 2018 that was won by President Trump in 2016.