The Lynchburg Republican City Committee is now defunct and the results of its May 30 “firehouse primary” are void, following a decision by the Republican State Central Committee on Saturday.
The roughly 80-member group, made up of leaders of the Republican Party, ruled 55-17 to uphold three appeals protesting the primary and the recommendations of its appeals committee to throw out the results, which had nominated Veronica Bratton, Marty Misjuns and Larry Taylor. (The official vote Saturday was 54-18, but party leaders said one proxy vote was misvoted and the tally should have been 55-17.)
That party action means that Lynchburg Republicans now have no official nominees for the three city council seats available in November. Under the ruling adopted Saturday, “all interested candidates” are allowed to file as independents. Shortly after the meeting, the “Team Lynchburg” slate of Taylor, Chris Boswell and Stephanie Reed announced it will run together in November. In the now-nullified firehouse primary, only Taylor had won.
Reed, a sitting council member who lost that May 30 vote, said in a statement: “Today’s decision is about restoring confidence in a process that many Republicans believed was unfair from the very beginning. The overwhelming vote demonstrates that Republican leaders across Virginia recognized serious problems and concluded that change was necessary.”
In a contentious meeting of the state central committee Saturday in Stafford County, state party chair Jeff Ryer asked Misjuns to leave the room for being disruptive.
Some of the shouting after the party’s governing body voted to overturn the Lynchburg results. City council member Marty Misjuns (in the blue jacket) can be seen leaving toward the end of the video. Video by Lindley Estes.
Misjuns maintained that he, along with Taylor and Bratton, remains “the Republican candidate” and suggested that the Republican State Central Committee might need to go to court to to sue the Virginia Department of Elections in order to replace the “already-certified candidates.”
Ryer’s take on the outcome of Saturday’s vote was different. He said the Republican State Central Committee does not believe that legal action is necessary because the Department of Elections was informed of irregularities after the primary.
“When we became aware that there’d be an appeal, the party nomination was in doubt,” he said.
Saturday’s vote by the state Republican Party’s governing board was another step in a long-running clash between two rival factions of Lynchburg Republicans. The side most aligned with the Lynchburg Republican City Committee appeared to triumph when two of its three candidates, Misjuns and Bratton, won the May 30 firehouse primary where 1,600 voters visited the Brookville Ruritan Club for the party-run nomination process to whittle 10 candidates down to three nominees. Then other Lynchburg Republicans filed appeals to allege multiple violations of party rules.
The appeals committee ruled in a 3-2 vote to side with the appellants, and on Friday approved its list of recommendations to correct the “egregious violations of the basic tenets of the Republican Party of Virginia,” as described in the majority opinion, provided to Cardinal News. (See the panel’s recommendation and the dissenting opinion below.)
The list of seven remedies includes an order to nullify the results of the nomination and allow all interested candidates to file as independents in the general election. The deadline to do so is June 16.
The appeal committee’s other recommendations, which were upheld Saturday, also ordered that the Lynchburg Republican City Committee be declared defunct and directs the state chairman to appoint replacements to the local party’s executive committee and to review the Lynchburg committee’s bylaws. They direct the current executive officers of the Lynchburg Republican City Committee to be banned from serving through the current term, with the exception of Steven “Doc” Troxel, who was commended for his attempts to conduct a fair process. They also direct former city council member Jeff Helgeson to be censured and barred from all party offices for the remainder of the current term (through 2027).
The state party action “makes it crystal clear that the Republican Party of Virginia is in bed with the Democrats in Richmond … [And] the people of Lynchburg will not get to choose their leadership for the Lynchburg Republican Party until after the election,” Misjuns said in an interview Saturday.
“I’m not going to stop fighting for the Republican voters that nominated me, and I am still the Republican nominee,” he said. “It takes a judge to change that, and if they can convince a court that that it should be different, then that’s what it is.”
The one change made to the appeals committee’s recommendations by the full Republican State Central Committee concerns the timing of the Lynchburg Republican committee’s leadership and activities. The state committee will appoint a new leader to the group within 30 days, but the Lynchburg Republican committee cannot “reconstitute” until between Nov. 3 and Jan. 15 — following the upcoming election.
Misjuns was present at Saturday’s meeting and was censured for disruption after Del. Wendell Walker, R-Lynchburg, claimed Misjuns’ “side conversations and threats” made it impossible to conduct business.
After the central committee’s vote carried, Misjuns boisterously asked the room, “Will Wendell Walker rip up the abortion resolution like he did the Lynchburg resolution? Will Wendell Walker rip up the pro-life resolution?” Ryer then asked Misjuns to leave the room.
He was not the only person who interrupted the proceedings. The Lynchburg Republican City Committee bused roughly 40 members to the Stafford County meeting location, and for most of the meeting they stood silent along the walls of the conference room holding posters that read “Voters Not Insiders,” “Say No! To Sore Losers,” and “Our Vote. Our Choice. Our City,” among other statements.
But as they left the room following the vote, members hurled accusations at Walker and called the actions “illegal” and “undemocratic.”
Barbara Teveleev was among those carrying posters and urging state central committee members as they entered the meeting to “count our votes.”
With her was Andrea Yesalis, who said she was a poll worker at the May 30 firehouse primary.
“We all worked so hard on that election,” she said. “I didn’t hear any complaints.”
However, Ryer said: “You heard a lot today about defuncting a committee or disbanding a committee. What that means in the terms of the party plan is it has been the determination of the state central committee that the Lynchburg Republican City Committee currently is not functioning,” he said. “Election integrity isn’t just for general elections.”
The state committee was swayed in large part, he said, by activities of the Lynchburg Republican committee to distribute flyers on three separate occasions endorsing or un-endorsing a candidate against party rules.
The “firehouse primary” 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 that favors, but doesn’t explicitly require, state-run primaries was enacted. Lynchburg is the only place in Virginia that used this process for its nominations.
Known as Helmer’s Law, the legislation took effect in 2024 and requires nomination methods to make provisions for absentee voters. It left little room for party-run nominations to operate, as absentee voting is an element that they have never included or aren’t logistically able to. In mid-March, Attorney General Jay Jones was asked to weigh in on the legality of Lynchburg’s nomination process in light of the new law.
Jones’ office has not yet issued an opinion, but on Monday it sent the Lynchburg Republican City Committee a letter saying it has “opened an inquiry into the conduct of the recent firehouse primary election.”
To assess the party’s compliance with Helmer’s Law, the attorney general’s office is requesting that the party submit 10 documents regarding the firehouse primary by June 29.
Ryer said the firehouse primary process can yield good results in specific cases, citing the example of Virginia Beach using it to replace a deceased candidate when no other canvass opportunity existed. Ryer said that process was never appealed despite its quick turnaround and party-run nature because of the integrity shown by that local group.
“I wish Lynchburg had lived up to that standard,” he said.
He also questioned whether the inquiry with the attorney general’s office would need to continue, considering that the results have been voided.
Walker also spoke following the meeting and said, “I think the first thing that we’ve got to do is just give some time to heal,” he said. “This is what happens when you get your priorities mixed up. Politics has become the god of the Lynchburg LRCC. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.”
He said if the Lynchburg Republican City Committee and Misjuns want to “pursue the radical method of going through the court, I think all they’re doing is just digging a deeper hole for themselves.”
“All I can say is, Marty, I apologize for not praying enough for you, because your attitude is what is destroying your individual life, your political life,” Walker said. “If you want to go out and attack people, and he has certainly has a record for that, you know, I’m not interested. I want to be a peacemaker. I want to bring healing back to our party.”
