Lynchburg Republican City Committee chair Veronica Bratton was the top vote-getter, and incumbents Marty Misjuns and Larry Taylor also secured spots, in a party-run nomination process Saturday for Lynchburg City Council.
Misjuns and Bratton ran on a team ticket along with political newcomer James “Trae” Watkins. Watkins finished in fourth place, not securing a nomination.
Taylor, the current mayor, was on a rival ticket, along with incumbent Stephanie Reed and political newcomer Chris Boswell.
Now, members from each rival team will be on the same slate for a November general election for three open city council seats. Bratton finished with 732 votes, Misjuns with 727, and Taylor with 683, said Steve Troxel, a member of the three-person electoral board that oversaw the nomination.
Vote totals for the other candidates weren’t announced but Misjuns said that Trae Watkins, the other member of his ticket, just missed winning a nomination with 650 votes, just 33 behind Taylor.
The final count came late Saturday night after more than 1,600 voters visited the Brookville Ruritan Club for the party-run nomination process to whittle 10 candidates down to three nominees. Called a firehouse primary, the nomination method was the only process of its kind held in Virginia this year, and the first to be executed since a new state law left little room for them to be executed legally.
“Today was a win for Virginia, and I’m excited that we in Lynchburg got to light the way,” Bratton said. She was a central advocate and organizer for the nomination process until she announced her candidacy and withdrew herself from oversight of the process.
The nomination process was run by the Lynchburg Republican City Committee rather than by the state. To participate, voters had to sign a pledge to support Republican candidates in the general election come November and meet other requirements of party loyalty.
Troxel said 119 ballots were set aside as provisional, meaning counters had to review them to ensure that voters met those rules. Of them, 28 were not counted, mainly because voters did not sign the necessary pledges or renunciation statements.
All voters had to cast their vote in person between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday, other than the “two dozen or less” voters who qualified for and submitted absentee ballots, Troxel said. The absentee ballot provision was necessary for the firehouse primary to meet the muster of a state law that took effect in January 2024, known colloquially as Helmer’s law, named for its introduction by Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County.
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.
The three Republican nominees will advance to November’s general election for the three open seats on the Lynchburg City Council — which now has a 6-1 Republican majority. 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.
