The relationship between the two men goes back several years. In 2016, Stewart was state co-chairman for Trump’s presidential campaign before he was fired for participating in a protest in front of Republican National Committee headquarters weeks before the election. Stewart told me that he attributed his win to “my strong support for President Trump.”

Stewart wasn’t the only pro-Trump winner on Tuesday night. In South Carolina, state Representative Katie Arrington, who repeatedly attacked her opponent Representative Mark Sanford for his criticisms of the president, won the state’s Republican House primary .

In Virginia, it had been Stewart’s Trumpian rhetoric that set him apart from the two other candidates, state Delegate Nick Freitas, and E.W. Jackson, a minister known for his conservative and controversial views. When Stewart ran against Ed Gillespie in the bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2016 and nearly won , he had campaigned mostly on protecting Confederate monuments ; in this year’s race for Senate, he made illegal immigration his main talking point. In a speech at the election-night event, Virginia Women for Trump founder Alice Butler-Short gave three reasons for supporting him: First, he was committed to deporting “illegal alien criminals”; second, he was against sanctuary cities; and third, he had been with the president from Day 1.

Hours before victory, Stewart’s supporters were feeling cautiously optimistic. While Stewart had shown a lead in the polls, a low turnout and a close vote count between him and his main challenger, Freitas, were putting everyone in a subdued mood. The tiki bar’s hatched roof drooped above volunteers; a woman wearing a Corey Stewart sticker half-heartedly sipped a piña colada. Even Jack Posobiec, an alt-right media personality known for propagating conspiracy theories , was unsure of how the night would turn out. “Obviously Corey has a huge name advantage from running last year and being part of the Trump campaign,” he told me early on in the night, “but Freitas has been extremely aggressive. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a really close race.”

And it was a close race: Stewart won by only about 5,000 votes. In the weeks leading up to election night, Freitas, a House delegate, had garnered high-profile endorsements from Senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul, as well as from the National Rifle Association; he became the establishment pick after his campaign released a January 2017 video in which Stewart praised Paul Nehlen, a self-described “pro-white” candidate, as his “personal hero.” Stewart has since said that he has cut ties with Nehlen, and no longer considers him a hero.

Robert Miller, a government consultant from Falls Church, told me that he’d been planning to vote for Freitas up until two weeks ago—when he had attended a rally where Freitas twice “wouldn’t answer” if he was a Trump supporter. When I asked which policy issues he cared about most, Miller said: “Two words: illegal immigration.”