Three raps of a gavel stopped a choir of interjections at Tuesday’s Lynchburg Republican City Committee meeting.
“Are we going to start attacking everybody in here tonight?” asked Del. Wendell Walker, R-Lynchburg.
“Yes we are, Mr. Walker,” said committee member Andrea Yesalis, who had just seconded a motion to review a current city council member’s behavior for alignment with Republican principles.
“We’re dividing our party,” Walker continued. The exchange was punctuated by audience chatter that filled the packed rows of All Nations Community Church.
“I have the floor,” Yesalis said. She continued reading her remarks about council member Stephanie Reed, who was elected as a Republican in 2022. “I do not feel she is in accord with the principles of the Republican Party. She has been flagrantly disloyal —”
A motion and multiple seconds to adjourn cut off the rest of her sentence, followed by overlapping assertions of what motion was on the floor, who had the right to speak, whether the meeting was over, and if the motion to review Reed was in line with Robert’s Rules of Order. It wasn’t on the agenda.
“Welcome to Lynchburg,” committee chair Veronica Bratton said in an interview when asked about the spirited exchange.
“People want to feel heard, and they haven’t felt heard because we haven’t been able to have those conversations,” she continued. “And what we’re seeing is, when we’re not having the conversations behind closed doors, then we’re unfortunately having the conversations in public, and it makes us all look bad. My job as the chair is to protect the Republican brand, and it makes it difficult when we can’t have conversations.”
The Lynchburg Republican City Committee set out Tuesday night with one main agenda item: to confirm the plan for its upcoming city council nomination process, championed by many members as a method to protect Republican votes.
Members did that, and took up a second vote: to open a review of a recent Facebook video and interview by Reed that criticized the nomination process.
“Tuesday’s meeting was nothing more than a failed attempt to distract the citizens from the true needs of our city,” Reed said in a phone interview Wednesday. “All my video did was point out concerns with a flawed process that needed to be brought to the public’s attention, and now it has been.”
A firehouse primary and Facebook posts
The plan approved Tuesday schedules a firehouse primary for Saturday, May 30, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Brookville Ruritan Club in Lynchburg. The party-run nomination method will determine which Republican candidates will represent the party on November’s city council ballot.
To vote that day, voters must be “in accord with the principles of the Republican Party” and, if requested, express their intent in writing to support all Republican nominees. Firehouse primaries are often seen as a way to keep members of other political parties from influencing who lands on a given party’s ticket.
Voters must participate in person on May 30 unless they qualify for an absentee ballot. There are five categories of voters who can qualify: those who are on active duty, temporarily live outside the country, attend college in another area, have a disability, or have a contagious disease of threat to public health. Those voter classes must be protected, according to a law that took effect in 2024 that requires every nominating method to make provisions for absentee voters. There is ongoing disagreement on the implications of the law, with some saying it effectively bans firehouse primaries and other party-run nomination processes that have never included absentee voters or aren’t logistically able to.
Primary elections, unlike firehouse primaries, are run by the state and are open to all voters because voters do not register by party in Virginia. They allow absentee voting and provide for a period of early voting.
Up for grabs in Lynchburg this year are the city council’s three at-large seats, currently held by Mayor Larry Taylor, council member Marty Misjuns, and Reed, all elected as Republicans.
Taylor and Reed, along with challenger Chris Boswell, earlier this year announced their candidacy as a slate called “Team Lynchburg” to seek the Republican nomination. Misjuns has not yet announced a bid for reelection.
The city council currently has a 6-1 Republican majority that is often seen as divided between two factions, which stack Taylor, Reed and Chris Faraldi in a group separate from Misjuns, Vice Mayor Curt Diemer and Jacqueline Timmer.
In a Facebook video over the weekend, Reed voiced her concern that the firehouse primary will rest power with a small group of party insiders who will likely favor the latter faction.
“This whole process is completely rigged to benefit those who are working behind the scenes to make sure that myself and my team members do not win,” she said in the video. She added that she has concerns about the plan’s legality, exclusion of voters who are working or out of town on May 30, and use of ranked-choice voting — a process opposed by the Lynchburg Republican City Committee in 2023 via a resolution modeled to align with the Republican National Committee’s own opposition to the voting method.
In further addressing the exclusion of voters, Reed continued: “Democrats will not be able to vote at all, even if they support some of the Republican candidates. So there are concerns about voter disenfranchisement.”
The video sparked action among committee members who already had questioned Reed’s party loyalty, Yesalis said in a phone interview Wednesday. She wants the party to elect a city council dais of “true conservatives,” she said, and supporting the motion to review Reed’s post is a step in the right direction.
“I felt it was necessary, because she had done such damage to the firehouse primary, trying to destroy the integrity of the process, trying to malign Veronica Bratton. So basically, I thought, ‘enough is enough.’ She is not a Republican. She should not even be on the ballot,” Yesalis said.
“Mrs. Reed, without any evidence whatsoever, has accused this organization, LRCC, its chair, and effectively all of us, its members, of being dishonest, unethical, corrupt, manipulative and rigging the election specifically against her,” Barbara Tevelev, the committee member who made the motion for Reed’s review, said at Tuesday’s meeting. “Now Mrs. Reed must be held accountable for her words and the damage her words are causing. They are causing division within our party, confusion, misinformation, distrust, and they undermine the nomination process.”
“[Reed] can have her opinion, but if she’s going to attack the very people that support her, she must realize there will be consequences,” committee member Janice Quattlebaum said, referencing the volunteers who lead efforts for fundraising, door-knocking and getting the word out for Republican candidates.
A majority of voters at the meeting approved the motion to open Reed’s review. Tevelev cited the section of the state party’s governing plan that allows committees to “request a ruling or interpretation of the State Party Plan from the General Counsel” and the section that reads members must be “in accord with the principles of the Republican Party.”
Bratton said the “review” consists of her sending Reed’s Facebook post and Facebook interview with local journalist Andre Whitehead to the Republican Party of Virginia.
The state party does not have a process that allows it to review candidates and will not be issuing any kind of opinion on Reed’s posts, Jeff Ryer, the newly elected chair of the Republican Party of Virginia, said in a phone interview Thursday. Anyone who properly files to run in the firehouse primary and pays the application fee will appear on the ballot, he added.
“We are not in the business of excluding people from candidacy because they’re practicing politics,” Ryer said.
The ‘silent majority’
There were 66 voting members and proxies at the committee meeting Tuesday.
About 13,500 Lynchburg residents voted for Republican Winsome Earle-Sears for governor in 2025. About 13,700 voted for Republican Glenn Youngkin for governor in 2021.
In the gap between those voting pools are Lynchburg residents who believe in Republican principles but may not feel represented by the city committee, said Beth White, a Republican who’s lived in Lynchburg for 40 years and has been a Liberty University employee for nearly 28 of them.
She’s been to two Lynchburg Republican City Committee meetings but doesn’t make a habit of attending because “if my political views, which are Republican in nature, are not wanted or welcomed, then I’m not going to go,” she said. “Why would I go where my values are not listened to?” she asked. She did not attend Tuesday night’s meeting.
She said she sees the committee as having a “small-tent philosophy,” where “there’s no room for you if you don’t swallow our Kool-Aid.” She said she believes, instead, that “there’s room for everybody in the Republican Party” and that committee members’ accusations against Reed are false.
“Their statement that she is not a Republican is based solely on their bias of what is a Republican,” she said. “Councilwoman Reed understands that the role of an at-large council person is to represent all of the city, not just those that you may philosophically or politically agree with. … Her beliefs and her stance is 100% Republican.”
Reed and Faraldi released statements after Tuesday’s meeting addressing Republicans who may not feel represented by the LRCC.
Tuesday’s “establishment huddle was just another attempt by party insiders to shut out and silence working Republican voters — the silent majority of our party. The silent working majority, not party insiders, will decide who our candidates will be,” Reed wrote. “Team Lynchburg is ready to win regardless of these antics and an intentionally uneven playing field. I am more motivated than ever to share our winning message.”
“A small group of biased party-insiders are trying [to] dictate your city council ballot in November,” Faraldi wrote. “We stop them by showing up on May 30 and making YOUR voice heard.”
When asked if the odds of the firehouse primary were stacked against Reed and her team of candidates, Bratton said, “That’s on them to get out their votes. … It’s all in the numbers. I don’t know how it favors one over the other.”
The road to May 30
The plan for the firehouse primary adopted Tuesday night confirms a plan that the Lynchburg Republican City Committee approved in mid-March, with edits offered by state party officials.
The main change involves the method of counting firehouse primary votes. The original plan said that “the top three candidates, who also have votes from a majority [50% + 1] of the voters who participated, will be declared the Republican Party nominees.” The language implied a ranked-choice voting process but did not specify how it would be conducted.
Tuesday’s adopted plan reads that “Ranked Choice Voting as defined in the RPV Party Plan will determine the three winners of the contest.”
The state party plan outlines the voting method as one “in which each voter ranks candidates in order of preference (first, second, third, etc.) and ballots are tabulated sequentially identifying the candidate with the least support, eliminating that candidate, and transferring those votes to the next-ranked candidate on each ballot, until there are only as many candidates left as seats available.”
Local party members will be trained by state party experts Friday regarding the ranked choice voting process, Bratton said.
Bratton explained during the meeting that the total number of candidates who will be on the ballot and the recommended number of candidates voters should rank is unknown at this time because candidates have until April 11 to file their applications and application fees.
In the meantime, some Lynchburg residents are watching the attorney general’s office.
Last month, Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, sent a letter to Attorney General Jay Jones to request “an opinion on the legality” of the committee’s decision to host a firehouse primary and “if deemed warranted, all legal action” to prevent the committee from carrying out its plan. He’s the author of the 2024 law that requires every nominating method to make provisions for absentee voters.
“I haven’t heard a word,” from the attorney general’s office since Helmer sent his letter, said Ryer, who drove to Lynchburg from Richmond to attend the Tuesday meeting. “So we just, you know, we go forward until we hear otherwise.”
Bratton said she’s confident the firehouse primary plan “is not a violation of any law.”
“I have a judge who says it isn’t. He says we have a legal right to do it. And mass meetings, conventions, firehouse primaries have been done for years…. This is nothing new,” she said, referencing a 2025 ruling from a federal lawsuit.
The attorney general’s office did not respond to two emails this week from Cardinal News about Lynchburg’s firehouse primary.
Meanwhile, White said, she’s running over the scenarios of what could happen when she goes to vote on May 30.
“I am fully expecting to not be allowed to vote,” she said.
White has been voting for Republicans in local, state, and national elections since 1996, she said. She’s only voted for a Democrat twice — once was in 2024, when she voted for James Coleman instead of current Ward III representative Diemer because she “believed that he was more what this ward needed.” She had a sign for Coleman in her front yard, too.
In an election that requires voters to be “in accord with the principles of the Republican Party,” White said she “expect[s] them to tell me that you can’t vote in this election because you supported a Democrat in the last city council election.” If she’s given a renunciation statement or loyalty pledge to sign, White said she won’t sign it.
“I firmly believe in person above party when it comes to local politics,” she said.
For Boswell, the road to May 30 is focused on a campaign that shows Hill City residents that “Team Lynchburg is in, and we’re the only ones who can actually unite all Lynchburg Republicans and win in November.”
There will not be a primary for Democratic candidates for the city council, said Randy Smith, the Lynchburg Democratic Committee chair, because only three candidates filed to run for the three open seats. Christina Delzingaro, Dave Henderson and Nathaniel “Nat” X. Marshall announced their campaign for the Democratic ticket in January.
The general election between the three Democratic candidates and three to-be-determined Republican candidates is Nov. 3.
Misjuns made a motion Tuesday night to publicly release Republican incumbents’ 2022 candidate applications so voters can compare them “to what we’ve done since we’ve been in office.” The motion was ruled out of order because it wasn’t on the agenda. It will be taken up at the committee’s April meeting.
Walker questioned his motives.
“I don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish here tonight. The past is behind us, the future is in front of us,” Walker said at the meeting. “I’m just wondering, what is it going to accomplish? And who is Republican? … Is that what we’re trying to determine tonight, who is really a Republican?”
