On the Chinese calendar, this is the Year of the Horse. In Virginia, it is the year of the voided election.
First, the Virginia Supreme Court threw out the April 21 special election on redistricting on the grounds that it had been improperly placed on the ballot. On Saturday, the state Republican Party’s governing body threw out the results of the Lynchburg Republicans’ May 30 nominating event for the city council on the grounds that it had violated multiple party rules.
Two different elections (one state-run, the other party-run) and two different challenges (one constitutional, the other an intraparty matter), but the result is the same: Those votes don’t count. Broadly speaking, the theme that runs through both is that process matters.
This isn’t a dispute confined to the Hill City; what happened Saturday has statewide implications that reach into the office of Attorney General Jay Jones. For those who just want those, skip ahead to points six and seven.
For those trying to understand the rest of what happened with the Lynchburg Republicans, and what happens now, here’s a full seven-point guide, one for each of the hills in the “City of Seven Hills.”
1. This was about rules, not factions
In Lynchburg, what we see is a battle between two rival factions who are relatively evenly matched and whose disputes might be personal or ideological, depending on the framing. That’s not how the Republican State Central Committee saw things, though. What it saw was a violation of party rules and a local unit that was way out of bounds.
The party’s appeals committee detailed at least seven ways that the conduct of the May 30 “firehouse primary” violated party procedures. The Lynchburg Republican City Committee contended that there was no evidence that the final results would have been different if those rule violations hadn’t happened — there were no allegations, for instance, that ineligible people voted or that votes were miscounted. However, implicit in the appeal was the notion that the committee may have scared some eligible voters away because they supported candidates the committee didn’t want.
The majority report from the appeals committee said “irregular provisional balloting procedures, voting via email, disenfranchisement of military members, intimidation of voters, improper submission of election forms, and a myriad of questionable actions from the Party that is supposed to defend election integrity is puzzling at best, conniving at worst.”
That report went on to say that the “many” violations of party rules “represent egregious violations of the basic tenets of the Republican Party of Virginia. This canvass, and the actions of certain actors in the LRCC, have tainted the reputation of the local Party beyond repair, and for that, there must be consequences.”
In the end, this did not come down to the state party choosing one Republican faction over another (although some in Lynchburg may see it that way); the state party came down on the side of the rules.
Lynchburg council member Marty Misjuns, one of the three firehouse primary winners who now no longer have nominations under this decision, countered that the party’s governing body “has been captured by consultants.”
2. The state Republican party vote on Lynchburg wasn’t close
There were many surprises in the state party’s ruling, but perhaps the biggest was the lopsided nature of the vote. The vote was initially recorded as 54-18, but should have been 55-17 because one member, who was also casting a proxy vote for an absent member, misunderstood her instructions and voted the “wrong” way. Regardless, this was, in political terms, a landslide that says something about how Lynchburg Republicans are viewed by their fellow party members statewide — at least at the leadership level.
In an interview after the vote with Lynchburg independent journalist Andre Whitehead, Veronica Bratton (who has been chair of the city committee and was one of the winners in the firehouse primary) blamed the appeals on council member Stephanie Reed, who lost the May 30 vote. “Our committee members have been stabbed in the back today by the Republican Party of Virginia because Stephanie Reed came in sixth place,” Bratton said. People in Lynchburg can judge the local dynamics for themselves, but I doubt that many of the State Central Committee members have heard of any of the local candidates. What State Central Committee members said at the meeting (and what some have told me since) is that they are simply sticklers for the rules and saw a local unit that was making them up as it went along.
3. It’s unusual for the state party to disband a local unit, but it happened here
The state party didn’t just nullify the committee’s firehouse primary results, it disbanded the whole Lynchburg Republican City Committee and ruled that the current members (with one exception) are barred from serving for the current term. State party chair Jeff Ryer will now appoint replacements. That’s clearly a major rebuke.
It’s unusual, but not unheard of, for the state party to disband a local unit. The last time this happened was in Suffolk in 2013. As in Lynchburg, the issue in Suffolk had been clashes between two rival factions over nominating methods, although what pushed things over the edge was when the Suffolk Republicans passed a motion to censure then-Republican Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert for failing to allow certain gun legislation to come to a vote. Gilbert, who is set to become a judge in Shenandoah County in a few weeks, was hardly soft on Second Amendment issues, but knew that the bill in question would not have passed the Democratic-controlled Senate and saw no point in holding what would have been a symbolic vote that might have put some Republican delegates in a tough spot at reelection time. Suffolk Republicans didn’t appreciate those political calculations and censured him; the state party disbanded them.
Now Lynchburg Republicans will get reconstituted under direction from the state party. It’s important to note that this disbanding was something the appeals committee unanimously recommended. The way Republican appeals committees work is that each side gets to appoint two members, and then those four appoint a fifth, so many votes come out 3-2. The recommendation that Lynchburg Republicans be disbanded, though, was 5-0.
4. The state party barred Jeff Helgeson from party membership through 2027
The appeals committee report singled out three Lynchburg Republicans for special mention — one good, two bad.
It formally commended Steven “Doc” Troxel “for his efforts to attempt a fair process” and makes him the one exception to Lynchburg Republican City Committee members who must go.
It faulted Bratton: “We would be remiss if we did not mention the brutal optics of a Chairman of the Lynchburg Republican City Committee who, based on testimony, appointed the overseers of an election that she planned on participating in as a candidate before renouncing her Chairmanship.”
However, the most drastic thing the state Republican Party did Saturday was to formally censure Helgeson, a former city council member, and bar him from party membership through 2027. Ryer said he couldn’t remember the party taking such action against any individual since 2016.
Helgeson’s offenses aren’t listed in the appeals committee report but he appears to be referenced indirectly as the party’s electoral board member who “stated on a local radio show [that] the names of Firehouse Primary voters/participants will be published in the local News & Advance.” The appeals committee ruled that “these comments by an Electoral Board Member were meant to intimidate voters and discourage participation in the Party Canvass. With these comments, this Electoral Board member was not acting ‘in good faith, with reasonable care, skill, and diligence,’” as the party rules require. The appeals committee unanimously recommended he be suspended and, by an overwhelming vote, the state party’s governing body agreed.
What makes this so important is that Helgeson is central to understanding the Republican infighting in Lynchburg. Maybe the split between Lynchburg Republicans would have happened anyway (there are factions everywhere in every party), but what precipitated was the council vote for mayor in January 2023. Republicans had just won a 5-2 majority on the council. Three Republicans (Misjuns, Helgeson and Larry Taylor) voted to make Helgeson, their longest-serving member, the mayor. The other two (Reed and Chris Faraldi) thought the pugnacious Helgeson was unsuited to be mayor and joined with two Democrats for a 4-3 vote that made Reed the mayor and Faraldi the vice mayor. All the disputes that have followed can be traced back to that vote. Now here’s the state party voting to make Helgeson ineligible for party service until the end of next year. He’s gone from being one vote away from mayor to a 55-17 vote by his own party to suspend him.
5. The Republican State Central Committee just gave Lynchburg Democrats an opening to win a council majority
The party voided the nominations from the firehouse primary and said “all interested candidates” could run as independents without violating party rules. Almost immediately, the Team Lynchburg slate of Reed, Taylor and Chris Boswell said it would. Misjuns talked about going to court to uphold his nomination. Bratton, on Sunday, said it’s the Republican Party of Virginia that would need to go to court to remove the names of the firehouse primary winners from the ballot.
I’m not a lawyer but the law appears to be on the side of the Republican Party of Virginia. The Code of Virginia says: “Should the nominee of any party die, withdraw, or have his nomination set aside for any reason, the party may nominate to fill the vacancy in accordance with its own rules.” That “set aside for any reason” likely covers situations like this where the state Republican Party says the nominations from firehouse primary are void, but maybe now we’ll get a judge to tell us for sure.
In the meantime, Bratton says the original slate that included her, Misjuns and Trae Watkins will be collecting signatures to run as independents if the courts don’t go her way.
There were 10 candidates in that firehouse primary, but to simplify things let’s suppose the two rival slates run as independents in the fall — Bratton, Misjuns and Watkins on one side, with Boswell, Reed and Taylor on the other. If that were a straight-up election, we’d finally get a good idea of how Lynchburg voters stand on the differences between them. That’s not what we’ll have, though. There are three Democrats running: Christina Delzingaro, Dave Henderson and Nat Marshall. The danger for both Republican slates is that they split the vote enough that the Democrats win. In last year’s governor’s race, Democrat Abigail Spanberger won 49.4% of the vote in Lynchburg. In the 2024 presidential race, Democrat Kamala Harris took 45.0% of the vote in Lynchburg. Based on those numbers, it wouldn’t take much of a split to tip the balance to the three Democratic council candidates.
6. The Lynchburg Republican conflict has implications for the 5th District congressional race
The 5th District is a hard district for Democrats to win. Winsome Earle-Sears was the weakest Republican candidate for governor since 1965, yet she still won 53.7% of the vote in the 5th District last year, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Nonetheless, a Democratic win is not out of the question. Spanberger didn’t put much effort into Southside; the Democratic nominee in the 5th — likely former Rep. Tom Perriello — will. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has already declared the 5th a targeted district. As of the spring campaign finance reports, Perriello had more than twice as much money as the Republican incumbent, John McGuire. Both candidates have primary challengers in the Aug. 4 primary, although McGuire’s opponent, Melanie Lucero, appears stronger than the ones Perriello will face. Let’s skip ahead and assume that McGuire and Perriello are the nominees (a safe bet). If Perriello is going to stand a chance, he’ll have to carry Lynchburg. It’s the second most-populous locality in the district and one of the few places with any significant pocket of Democratic voters. How much, if any, will this turmoil among Lynchburg Republicans hamper McGuire and help Perriello? We don’t know, but it’s something to keep an eye on. McGuire will need a full effort from Lynchburg Republicans but may not be able to get it. If Perriello wins narrowly, you can bet that the Lynchburg situation will get cited as one factor.
(If some of these observations seem familiar, it’s because I wrote about Lynchburg’s role in the 5th District two weeks ago in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter. Yes, that’s a self-serving pitch to sign up for that newsletter. See below.)
7. Republicans may have just avoided legal action by the attorney general
If there’s a silver lining for the now-defunct Lynchburg Republican City Committee, it’s this: Its quest to find a legal way to hold a firehouse primary may have just gotten a reprieve.
Virginia now operates under a law — known as Helmer’s Law, for its sponsor, Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County — that all but requires parties to hold state-run primaries to pick their nominees for a general election. (It does exempt nominations for special elections, which is why there’s no controversy over the upcoming June 20 firehouse primary that Montgomery County Republicans are holding to nominate a sheriff’s candidate for a special election.) Lynchburg Republicans have tried to find the daylight in the “all but” provision of Helmer’s Law to hold a party-run nomination.
Last week, the attorney general’s office announced an “inquiry” into whether the Lynchburg Republican process complied with state law. Let’s just say that probably wasn’t a friendly inquiry. However, with the state Republicans now voiding the local results, that legal question is likely moot, which preserves the theoretical option of a firehouse primary for another day.
The irony is that none of the appeals that dissenting Lynchburg Republicans filed challenged the process itself, only the way it was run. Had Lynchburg Republicans run that firehouse primary in a different way — if they hadn’t gone on the radio to announce that voters would have their names listed in the local newspaper, for instance; if they hadn’t distributed literature that essentially disparaged certain candidates, if they hadn’t done many other things — the results might well have been the same and there would have been no appeals to get upheld. In that case, though, Jones might have been contemplating legal action. Now it’s Republicans who are.
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