Lynchburg is the only place in Virginia this year set to nominate candidates using a party-run process — and the local Republican committee running it is the first to plan such a nomination since a new state law left little room for them to be executed legally.
The Lynchburg Republican City Committee will hold its firehouse primary on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Brookville Ruritan Club to nominate its candidates for the Lynchburg City Council.
Three seats of the 6-1 Republican majority council — held now by Marty Misjuns, Stephanie Reed and Mayor Larry Taylor, all Republicans — will be on Lynchburg’s ballot this November.
There are a total of 10 candidates seeking the Republican nomination for the open seats.
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Full candidate bios, along with candidates’ policy priorities and answers to 10 standardized questions, are available on Cardinal News’ Voter Guide.
The incumbents are split between two rival slates of candidates. One group includes Reed and Taylor with political newcomer Chris Boswell. The other slate connects Misjuns with Veronica Bratton, the Lynchburg Republican City Committee’s chair, and James “Trae” Watkins, a political newcomer.
The remaining four candidates — Greg Berry, Farid “FJ” Jalil, Zach Melder and Ryan Thomas — have tossed their names into the ring of the firehouse primary, a nomination process that, unlike others in Virginia, is run by the local party rather than by the state and limits votes to those who pledge to support Republican candidates in the general election come November.
Ahead of the firehouse primary, Republican Party leaders explained the voting and screening processes that are planned for Saturday, while taking stock of the debates that have shaped the process so far this spring.
What can voters expect on Saturday?
To vote in the firehouse primary, an individual must be a registered voter of Lynchburg, present an ID and sign a pledge stating that they intend to support the Republican Party’s nominees in November, said Dan Pense, a member of the local Republican committee who’s helped plan the firehouse primary.
Voters do not register by party in Virginia, so state-run primary elections are open to all; Democratic voters can weigh in on Republican primaries and vice versa. Supporters of the firehouse primary say it protects the Republican ticket from Democratic voters’ influence.
Even so, Lynchburg Republicans running the nomination “are very limited as far as who they can exclude, period,” said Jeff Ryer, chair of the Republican Party of Virginia.
“Basically, if you’re willing to sign the pledge, you can vote,” he said.
The only people who can be turned away on Saturday, as dictated by the state party plan, Ryer said, are:
- Individuals who sought the Republican nomination and subsequently supported a candidate other than the party’s nominee in the past four years;
- Individuals who signed a pledge indicating their intent to support a Republican nominee and subsequently supported a candidate other than the nominee in the past four years;
- Individuals who voted in a Democratic Party primary or nomination process in the past five years. Those in this category can participate in Saturday’s firehouse primary if they sign a “renunciation statement” that says they consider themselves Republicans now.
Pense said members of the local party will check which elections individuals have voted in to approve them as voters in the firehouse primary. Those interested in voting Saturday can pre-register online to speed up the process, Pense said, or register when they arrive at the Ruritan Club and wait while their voting record is vetted.
If committee members think an individual should be excluded from voting Saturday because they supported a non-Republican candidate after signing a pledge promising otherwise, Ryer said, they have to produce evidence — including a copy of the signed pledge and proof of said support, such as a campaign contribution or social media post — to stop the individual from casting a ballot.
Once voters are registered, they’ll get a ballot, fill it out and drop it in a lock box, Pense said. The environment should feel similar to what voters are used to during general elections, he added, with candidates campaigning 40 feet outside the entrance, a lane for curbside voting, and lines for checking in at the door.
How will votes be counted?
Voters will be asked to cast a total of three votes for their three favorite candidates. The votes will be equally weighted and counted with a plurality method, meaning that the three candidates who get the most votes win the nomination.
That counting plan is new, as of May 19. When the Lynchburg Republican City Committee first solidified its firehouse primary plans in mid-March, its members planned to use ranked-choice voting to decide the winners. Ranked-choice voting — a method in which voters rank candidates in order of preference and votes are reallocated based on those preferences in multiple rounds of counting — was originally chosen to ensure that each nominee had a broad base of support throughout the party, Pense said.
After lengthy discussions on how the state party’s approved method of ranked-choice voting would shake out in a multi-candidate race, committee members decided to switch the counting method. At a committee meeting less than two weeks before the firehouse primary, a motion to adopt a different form of ranked-choice voting was first made by committee member Jeff Helgeson and later amended by member Bill Hawkins to scrap the ranked-choice vote altogether and pick up the plurality counting method instead.
With 10 candidates and a plurality count, a candidate could theoretically win the nomination with as little as 11% of the vote, said Pense, who’s a leader of the firehouse primary’s balloting committee and Lynchburg’s former registrar.
“And that means that they haven’t proven having very deep support within the party,” he said. “But the state party’s ranked choice method really doesn’t work for a three-seat race. This is the best we could do.”
A benefit of the switch, Pense said, is that votes will be much easier to tabulate now than they would have been with the multiple rounds of counting demanded by ranked-choice voting.
About a dozen counters from the counties surrounding Lynchburg — who “have less of a horse in the race” because they aren’t governed by the Lynchburg City Council — will begin the tabulation after the polls close at 3 p.m., Pense said.
How will absentee votes factor in?
Individuals must cast their vote in person at the Brookville Ruritan Club on Saturday within the seven-hour voting window, unless they qualify for an absentee ballot.
The absentee ballot provision is necessary to meet the muster of a state law that passed in 2021 and took effect in January 2024. Known colloquially as Helmer’s law, named for its introduction by Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, the legislation effectively banned party-run nomination processes because it requires them to make provisions for absentee voters — something that party-run processes have never done and that some aren’t logistically able to do.
In Lynchburg’s upcoming firehouse primary, absentee ballots are available to those who fall into the categories of protected absentee groups described in Helmer’s law: service members on active duty, those temporarily living outside the country, students attending college, people with disabilities, and people with or exposed to a contagious disease that is a threat to public health.
Those who are at work, on vacation or otherwise unable to get to the Brookville Ruritan Club on May 30 and don’t qualify for an absentee ballot can’t cast a vote. Critics of the firehouse primary process say it disenfranchises the Republican voters who fall into such categories.
Pense said he’s expecting between 20 and 30 absentee ballots to be included in Saturday’s count.
When absentee ballots were mailed out earlier this spring, ranked-choice voting was still the chosen method, and voters were instructed to rank their candidates in their order of preference.
Now that the counting method has changed, Pense said, absentee voters’ top three choices will be counted as equal votes. The rest of their rankings will be scrapped.
Who’s running for the Republican nomination?
At the state level, all eyes are on Lynchburg because it is the first to attempt a party-run nomination of this kind since Helmer’s law took effect, Ryer said. Others have done so for special elections, which are an exception to the law, but not for a general election, as Lynchburg is.
At the local level, the nomination will be watched because it’s the playing field where two rival factions of Lynchburg’s Republican Party will go head to head, surrounded by candidates new to the game.
Incumbent Misjuns is joined by Bratton and Watkins on a slate that promises to “stop wasteful tax-and-spend policies,” “hold bureaucrats accountable to citizens,” “fight Spanberger’s extreme overreach” and “defend Republican values,” according to a campaign brochure.
Boswell joins incumbents Reed and Taylor with goals that include “growing the local economy, supporting law enforcement, improving Lynchburg City Schools, and being good stewards of taxpayer dollars,” as described on their campaign’s website.
Other names on the ballot include:
- Berry, who hopes to “strengthen public safety, keep taxes low, and help small businesses thrive,” and calls everyone to “follow Jesus Christ, read the Bible, and live by Christian principles,” according to posts on his campaign’s Facebook page;
- Jalil, who’s running for the city council because “the drama has to stop” on the dais and calling for “lower taxes, higher safety, healthy economic development, better leadership,” as he described in a campaign flyer;
- Melder, who’s “committed to strengthening our local economy, supporting safe and vibrant neighborhoods, and ensuring transparent, accountable leadership at City Hall,” with a campaign about “listening first and leading with integrity,” according to his campaign website;
- Thomas, who’s hoping “to bring steady, practical, and principled leadership focused on affordability, accountability, and restoring trust in local government,” according to his campaign website.
Full candidate bios, along with candidates’ policy priorities and answers to 10 standardized questions, are available on Cardinal News’ Voter Guide.
How deep are the lines in the sand?
Some involved in planning the firehouse primary have also been involved in campaigns.
Helgeson, who led the initiative to change the originally adopted ranked-choice voting plan, has campaigned for the Bratton, Misjuns and Watkins team on Facebook in a video ad paid for by Misjuns for Lynchburg.
“This is the conservative team. We’d appreciate your vote May 30 at our Republican firehouse primary,” Helgeson says in the video as he points to a Bratton-Misjuns-Watkins sign and tosses a sign with Reed and Taylor’s names to the side.
Andrea Yesalis, a local party committee member who said she helped organize the nomination process, runs a Facebook page and a political action committee that share videos criticizing Reed and aims “to get people to wake up and take a real hard look” at her record as an incumbent.
Bratton was a central advocate for the firehouse primary in the months leading up to her announcement to run for the city council. She recused herself from nomination oversight once she started her campaign and introduced a three-person electoral board — which includes Helgeson — to take over.
“We’re talking about politics here, so you pretty much figure that every person is biased one way or another,” said Peter Cefaratti, a member of the local party. “I’m biased, you’re biased, everybody has a different opinion about the same issue, and that’s fine. The question is, is the process itself biased? Our goal is to be unbiased in the process.”
Yesalis said the firehouse primary is fair — the stakes are too high for it not to be, as many party members seek to make the firehouse primary airtight so others across Virginia can look to Lynchburg as an example for how to make firehouse primaries work in a new nomination environment governed by Helmer’s law.
“We’re very dedicated to getting these firehouse primaries up and running and functional across the state, because they do serve a really important purpose… as a way to maintain and protect party boundaries,” she said. “So we’ve all been hyper focused on concern over whether we’ll be criticized or accused of any wrongdoing, dotting every last i, crossing every t.”
The Reed-Taylor-Boswell slate, known as Team Lynchburg, thinks differently.
“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,” Reed said in a Facebook video earlier this spring that sparked discussions of party division. Last month, she released a statement to add that “Team Lynchburg is ready to win regardless of these antics and an intentionally uneven playing field.”
Team Lynchburg members did not attend either of the two candidate forums hosted by the Lynchburg Republican City Committee this spring.
“I think most people took it as a slap in the face that the two incumbents in the Team Lynchburg just ignored our process and the forums,” Cefaratti said.
Team Lynchburg held its own events this spring, including meet and greets and a policy press conference, and did not participate in the local party’s forums “because our focus is on talking directly to the voters of Lynchburg, not lending credibility to a process driven by party insiders,” Team Lynchburg said in a statement.
Will the firehouse primary meet legal muster?
In mid-March, Helmer asked Attorney General Jay Jones to weigh in on the legality of Lynchburg’s nomination process, saying that Lynchburg Republicans aren’t following the state law Helmer introduced to protect absentee voters.
Jones has not yet issued an opinion.
This isn’t the first time that an attorney general has been asked to weigh in on the LRCC’s actions. In 2024, when the committee started the process to conduct a firehouse primary, Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, requested an attorney general opinion to address widespread concern with the party’s move. Then-Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, advised that a firehouse primary would run afoul of Helmer’s law, and the local party pivoted and opted for a state-run primary in response.
What’s different this time around, Bratton told Cardinal News in March, is that she believes she has a court ruling on her side.
In the wake of the 2024 election cycle, the LRCC filed a federal lawsuit against the Virginia Department of Elections, the State Board of Elections and then-Elections Commissioner Susan Beals, arguing that Helmer’s law unconstitutionally strips political parties of their First Amendment right to free association.
In July 2025, a federal judge granted a motion by Beals to dismiss the lawsuit. But Judge Norman Moon gave the LRCC a path forward in his decision, Bratton said: His ruling states that “parties need only ensure practical levels of inclusion” for absentee voters to follow Helmer’s law and that Virginia “has a duty to allow nomination methods that facilitate exclusive party affiliation and association.”
What’s next?
The three Republican nominees selected Saturday will advance to November’s general election for the three open seats on the Lynchburg City Council.
They will face off against the three Democratic nominees: Nonprofit CEO Christina Delzingaro, local business owner Dave Henderson, and retired engineer Nat Marshall, who kicked off their campaigns in January. The local Democratic party did not need to run a primary because only those three candidates announced their plans to seek the Democratic nomination.
Independent candidates have until June 16 to file the necessary paperwork to run in the city council election. One independent candidate has qualified so far, said Patricia Jones, Lynchburg’s general registrar: Eli Rybinni, who also goes by the name Shawn Hunter and is the leader of the Lynchburg Peacemakers group, a nonprofit that aims to prevent violence in high-crime neighborhoods by running community outreach programs.
