Denver Lee Riggleman III (born March 17, 1970) is an American businessman and former politician from Virginia who served one term as the United States representative for Virginia's 5th congressional district. A former Air Force officer and National Security Agency contractor, Riggleman opened a craft distillery in Virginia in 2014. As a Republican, he ran for his party's nomination in the 2017 gubernatorial election, but withdrew from the race. Riggleman was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 2018. Riggleman was defeated in his bid for reelection in 2020, losing to Republican primary challenger Bob Good in a drive-through party convention. Riggleman co-authored a book with Hunter Walker titled The Breach, which was published in October of 2022. The book detailed his work on the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Early life and education
Riggleman was born and raised in Manassas, Virginia. He graduated from Stonewall Jackson High School in 1988. Riggleman earned an Associate of Arts from Rowan College at Burlington County, formerly Burlington County College, in 1996. He received an Associate of Applied Science in avionics systems from the Community College of the Air Force at Air University in 1996. In 1998, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia. Riggleman received a graduate certificate in project management from Villanova University in 2007.
Career
Riggleman served in the Air Force for 15 years. After initially serving as an enlisted avionics technician, he received a commission and went on to serve as an intelligence officer.
Riggleman founded NSA contractor Analytics Warehouse, LLC, in 2007, and was its CEO until 2015.
In 2014, Riggleman and his wife opened Silverback Distillery, a 50-acre craft distillery in Afton, Virginia, outside Charlottesville. He has pushed for deregulation of distilleries in the state and changes to the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority. Together with other distillers, the Rigglemans established a "loosely formed distillers guild" and hired a lobbyist. Riggleman has "criticized the state's alcohol and tax laws as unfairly harsh toward spirits producers and spoke[n] of a new 'whiskey rebellion.'"
Early political career
Gubernatorial election
In December 2016, Riggleman filed papers to seek the Republican nomination for governor of Virginia in the 2017 gubernatorial election. His opponents in the Republican primary were former President George W. Bush counselor and Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie, Prince William County Board of Supervisors chairman Corey Stewart, and state Senator Frank Wagner of Virginia Beach. Riggleman suspended his campaign on March 16, 2017.
Riggleman had expressed interest in running for Governor in 2021 as an independent or third-party candidate, citing his belief that the Republican Party of Virginia is broken.
U.S. House of Representatives
Elections
2018
In the 2018 elections, Riggleman was the Republican nominee for the United States House of Representatives election for . He defeated Cynthia Dunbar, who had lost the Republican nomination in the 6th district just weeks before, in the final round of voting to win the nomination. The Republican incumbent, Tom Garrett, did not run for reelection.
In the November 2018 general election, Riggleman defeated Democratic nominee Leslie Cockburn with 53% of the vote to Cockburn's 47%.
Interest in Bigfoot
During the campaign, Cockburn accused Riggleman of being a "devotee of Bigfoot erotica", based on an image he shared from his Instagram to promote a book titled The Mating Habits of Bigfoot and Why Women Want Him. In an interview with CRTV Riggleman said the image was an obvious joke, but that he had an interest in Bigfoot, and co-authored the actual self-published book Bigfoot Exterminators, Inc.: The Partially Cautionary, Mostly True Tale of Monster Hunt 2006, with ESPN writer Don Barone. In a phone interview with The Washington Post, he clarified that it was an "anthropological book sort of based on parody and satire" and said, "I thought it was funny. There is no way that anybody's dumb enough to think this is real."
In 2020, Riggleman released a book titled Bigfoot… It's Complicated, and described himself as a "Bigfoot scholar." Despite that, he does not believe in the creature's existence.