Hunsicker to Challenge Eric Cantor in Virginia’s 7th District

Real estate broker and homebuilder David Hunsicker plans to challenge House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Virginia’s 7^th congressional district.

Hunsicker, a retired Air Force pilot who flew combat missions in Vietnam, has run for Congress twice previously, most recently losing a 2008 Democratic primary for the right to challenge U.S. Rep. Mary Bono Mack in California’s 45^th congressional district.

Cantor, who has never been seriously challenged since winning his seat eleven years ago, came under fire last week for walking out of the bipartisan budget talks. 

Cantor’s most serious challenge from a Democratic candidate occurred in 2008 when Anita Hartke — daughter of the late Vance Hartke, a three-term U.S. senator from Indiana who briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972 — garnered 37 percent of the vote in the heavily-Republican district.

Cantor won a sixth consecutive term in 2010, defeating Democrat Rick Waugh and Independent Green Floyd Bayne with 59 percent of the vote.

“Cantor fears Tea Party competition and disapproval, but he also knows his mother’s milk is from the Wall Street banks. His solution to the problem is to disappear – one thing he is good at doing,” said Hunsicker in a statement posted on his campaign website.

Hunsicker realizes he faces an uphill battle, but thinks it’ll be worth it.

“The average working class person has seen the American Dream become a distant memory,” he says. “Our country has become an oligarchy.” If elected, Hunsicker promises to lead the fight in Congress to shift the nation’s economic wealth back to the majority of hard-working, middle-class Americans.

Hunsicker is expected to face primary opposition from attorney E. Wayne Powell.