Brat came to national prominence when he defeated the U.S. House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, in the 2014 Republican primary in Virginia's 7th congressional district.

[3][4] His father, Paul, was a doctor of internal medicine; his mother, Nancy, was employed as a social worker in Alma, Michigan, where he was raised.

[8][9][10] After working for Arthur Andersen and as a consultant for the World Bank,[11] Brat joined the faculty of Randolph–Macon College in 1996[9] as an economics professor.

[17][better source needed] In January 2019, following his defeat in the 2018 congressional election, Brat was named dean of the Liberty University School of Business.

[20][21] Brat has advocated that Christians should forcefully support free-market capitalism and behave altruistically, in the manner of Jesus, so that "we would not need the government to backstop every action we take".

[22] According to Kevin Roose in a New York Magazine article, Brat "sees free-market economics as being intricately linked to ethics and faith", and he makes the case that Adam Smith's "'invisible hand' theory should be properly seen in the context of Christian moral philosophy".

[25] Brat has blamed the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany on the lack of "unified resistance", adding, "I have the sinking feeling that it could all happen again, quite easily".

[26] Beginning in 2015, Brat volunteered[27] as a special legislative assistant to Virginia state senator Walter Stosch,[28] working on education issues.

[51] Matea Gold in The Washington Post stated, "the fact that Brat took off without the help of those organizations [national tea party groups] now makes it harder for them to claim his victory as their own.

[54] He ran an anti-establishment campaign criticizing Cantor's position on illegal immigration,[55] government bailouts and budget deals while frequently invoking God and the United States Constitution in his speeches.

During the campaign, Cantor criticized Brat as a "liberal professor" who had strong ties to Tim Kaine, Virginia's former Democratic governor and current junior Senator.

[56] Brat complained that Cantor had a "crony-capitalist mentality", putting the interests of the corporate sector ahead of small businesses.

"[60] One local reporter told David Carr of The New York Times that many constituents believed Cantor was arrogant and unapproachable.

[58] Brat faced Democratic nominee Jack Trammell, another professor at Randolph-Macon, and James Carr, a Libertarian candidate, in the November general election.

Brat referred to Pelosi 25 times, according to The Washington Post, drawing laughs from the audience and the widely reported rejoinder, "Abigail Spanberger is my name.

Brat ultimately lost to Spanberger, 48.4% to 50.3%,[69] due in part to a large swing in the district's shares of Henrico and Chesterfield counties, traditional Republican strongholds.

On January 28, at a meeting held at Hanover Tavern with "the GOP-friendly audience", he had lamented that, "[s]ince Obamacare and these issues have come up, the women are in my grill no matter where I go.

"[81] Brat had another run-in with social media on March 1, 2018, when it was discovered that his campaign Twitter account had "liked" several controversial tweets, including one that questioned whether one of the survivors of the Parkland school shooting, David Hogg, was a "crisis actor".

[82] After an outcry from concerned constituents, Brat's office issued a statement that attributed the likes to a campaign staffer who believed they were logged into their personal account.

"[67] According to the Washington Post, Brat opposed federally driven education policies such as the Common Core curriculum and No Child Left Behind.

[10] Brat's decision to enter the 2014 Republican primary was driven largely by Cantor's role in weakening congressional ethics reform.

"If you want to find out the smoking gun in this campaign, just go Google and type the STOCK Act and CNN and Eric Cantor", Brat said.

[88] In March 2017, he said he opposed the initial version of the American Health Care Act, which was the GOP's replacement for Obamacare, and that he intended to vote against it in the House Budget Committee.

[92] Brat called for the National Security Agency to end bulk collection of phone records and stated his support for statutory protections for e-mail privacy.

He argued that domestic intelligence activities have "spun out of control"[93] and that "the NSA's indiscriminate collection of data on all Americans is a disturbing violation of our Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

"[94] In an April 21, 2015, interview with radio talk show host Rusty Humphries, Brat claimed that the terrorist group ISIS had set up a base in Texas.

[95] Brat supported President Trump's 2017 executive order to temporarily curtail immigration from the Muslim-majority nations of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen until better screening methods are devised.

[98] Brat criticized both major parties' approach to Medicare and Social Security, stating, "neither side of the aisle will talk about the most important issues because that is going to involve pain.