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Months after a bitter primary and weeks before a consequential election, the Republican party in one of Virginia’s most conservative Congressional Districts has reached a crossroads after a handful of members were removed from party leadership for refusing to sign a loyalty pledge.
Jim Herring, one of the members who declined to sign the pledge and was “deemed to have resigned as a result,” said he hoped this would become a “come to Jesus” moment in the Republican Party of Virginia.
Herring said he is worried about what he sees as a lack of transparency regarding the origin of the pledge. He’s hoping the intra-party drama will result in a flip of the power structure from what he sees as top-down to people-up.
“I’m hoping people realize that power over people isn’t the way that we want our party to be viewed,” he said.
Rich Anderson, chair of the Republican Party of Virginia, argued that the party’s current governing body was appointed by a grassroots coalition of party members, however, and that there needs to be a central planning authority to keep the party organized.
“What you see playing out, this difference in viewpoint on how this party should be governed is nothing new,” Anderson said. “At some point, the body reaches a consensus on a way forward, but in the meantime, it’s drama.”
How did the party in-fighting begin?
On June 6, amid a hotly contested primary election between incumbent Rep. Bob Good and state Sen. John McGuire, a group of 25 party leaders in the 5th District signed an open letter to former President Donald Trump. In that letter, they asked the then-presumptive Republican nominee for president to reconsider his endorsement of McGuire and to instead put his support behind Good.
“Before the primary, any Republican can support any candidate they want,” Herring, one of the 25 party leaders who signed the open letter, said.
Trump had endorsed McGuire in May after Good had issued his support for Trump’s primary opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in early 2023. The signers of the June 6 letter argued that McGuire had a “history of lying to the voters and only representing his own ambitions rather than the needs of his constituents.” They closed the missive by asking that Trump reconsider his “ill-advised endorsement” of McGuire.
That didn’t happen. McGuire went on to beat Good in the primary and the subsequent recount, requested and paid for by the incumbent, by about 370 votes.
In the weeks that followed the recount, rumblings of a possible write-in campaign in support of Good began to spread throughout the district and prompted the Republican Party of Virginia’s executive committee to act.
Jeff Ryer, chair of the 1st Congressional District Republican Party, called for a vote during a September 14 executive committee meeting to require a pledge to be sent to the 5th District leaders who signed the June 6 letter to Trump. That pledge was meant to reaffirm the signatories’ support for all three federal Republican nominees in the 5th District, including McGuire. Recipients of the pledge were to be “deemed to have resigned” from their position within the party if they declined to sign it.
“Numerous posts on social media were creating a narrative that some Republicans in leadership positions were not supporting the candidacies of all of our nominees,” Ryer said in an email when asked what prompted his motion.
He pointed out that supporting the Republican nominees for office is the minimum requirement for serving in an official capacity in the state party.
Ryer’s motion was approved during the Sept. 14 meeting, and the reaffirmation pledges were sent to the 25 party leaders in the 5th District. They were given until September 27 to sign and return the pledges. In all, a handful of the district’s party leaders declined to sign the pledge and resigned from their positions.
A fight over bylaws
Herring, who was vice chair of the 5th District Republican Party before he declined to sign the pledge, said his decision wasn’t based on his support for or against any candidate.
“We’ve never refused to support the nominee, we’ve never worked against the nominee, had no intentions of doing so,” he said, speaking for himself and others who opted to remain anonymous. “I’m not signing something blindly because somebody says ‘You have to do this.’”
Herring instead took issue with how the vote to require the pledge came about. He said that the executive committee, a subcommittee of the state central committee, circumvented the proper order in which those types of decisions should be made, when it took up Ryer’s motion on Sept. 14. He said that the committee also failed to follow a party rule that says a vote should be taken in an open meeting.
“It’s a violation of [the party’s] legal governing documents — I think everybody should refuse to sign it, but everybody has their right to do what they need to do,” he said.
Ryer argued that the process was fully in line with the rules set by the party, however. He pointed out that provisions in the party plan allowed for him to call the motion during the Sept. 14 meeting.
“By handling this matter in the executive committee, the goal was to give those who were requested to affirm their support the ability to do so discreetly, if they so chose. Obviously, some preferred media attention,” he said in an email.
Anderson said that the executive committee is empowered to act on behalf of the state central committee when it’s not in session. He said he prefers to have policy taken up by the larger body whenever possible.
Herring pointed out that he had signed three similar loyalty pledges earlier in the year, prior to the primary election, that outlined his commitment to support the Republican nominees. Chris Marsden, the attorney for the Republican Party of Virginia confirmed in late September that those three previous loyalty oaths were still valid, Herring said.
“So to respond to their dictate that we sign this [latest] loyalty oath, I included all three of those, I reaffirmed my commitment to all of those in the letter I sent to Chairman [Rich] Anderson, but I also pointed out areas where they had violated the party plan in this whole process to begin with,” Herring said.
So, why require a fourth loyalty pledge when the first three were still considered valid? The turmoil within the district around the primary and rumblings of a write-in campaign in support of Good in the general election led party leadership to require a reaffirmation pledge from those 25 signatories of the June 6 letter to Trump.
On Sept. 29, a handful of members of the party who declined to sign that latest pledge received an email from Anderson and a letter that said they had been “deemed to have resigned” from their positions in the party.
“In the middle of a campaign season, in the middle of an election season,” Herring said.
Marsden did not respond to a request for comment.
Where does the party go from here?
“It seems like we always have a select group of Republicans who, if they disagree with something, instead of having a family discussion, they choose to go out on the street corner and air the family differences,” Anderson said.
Regardless, he said he has confidence in District Chair Rich Buchanan’s ability to lead the “Fighting 5th” out of its current tumult. Buchanan had also signed the June 6 letter to Trump that asked the former president to reconsider his endorsement of McGuire. Buchanan did not respond to a request for comment.
Herring said he had spent his birthday, Sept. 13, delivering thousands of campaign signs across eight different counties, the day before the executive committee took the vote that would ultimately lead to his ouster.
“I spent the whole day doing that to help the candidates, to help my party. The next day, they take this vote? It’s despicable,” he said. “I was highly offended to have my loyalty questioned when I’ve been doing it for over four decades.”
He wasn’t willing to comment on his next steps with the 5th District Republican Party.