We’re between seasons for the “Game of Thrones” prequel “House of the Dragon,” but for those of you who are transfixed by palace intrigue, power struggles and cutthroat rivalries, I recommend Lynchburg’s latest political drama.
The immediate issue may seem a technicality to some — how Lynchburg Republicans go about nominating their city council candidates for this fall’s election — but the stakes and implications are far bigger than that. Maybe not to the level of who gets to sit on the Iron Throne of Westeros, but who gets to sit on the Lynchburg City Council and, potentially, how political parties across the state are allowed to nominate their candidates.
For background, I refer you to this most recent story by Cardinal’s Lynchburg-based reporter, Emma Malinak, but this larger story goes back years — maybe just not as far as George R.R. Martin’s sprawling epic and with substantially fewer dragons.
We must go back to 2021, when Democrats controlled the governorship (under Ralph Northam) and both chambers of the General Assembly. The legislature that year enacted two laws that are relevant today. It moved municipal elections, which traditionally had been low-turnout affairs in May, to November, where they’d have more voters (and, in most cities, more Democratic voters). It also passed a bill that has come to be known as Helmer’s Law, after its sponsor, Del. Dan Helmer D-Fairfax County, that regulates how parties can nominate their candidates. More on that to come.
The one exception to November municipal elections benefiting Democrats was Lynchburg, the state’s largest city with Republican proclivities. In the city’s first November elections for the city council, in 2022, a Republican slate swept the three at-large seats to take a 5-2 majority. You’d think that would have ushered in a Republican golden age. Instead that Republican majority (now expanded to 6-1 after the 2024 elections for four ward-based seats) has been marked by the most spectacular infighting I’ve ever seen in local government.
The exact reasons for that infighting haven’t always been clear, but there are definitely two factions that seem to just plain not like one another. We now approach another election — those at-large seats are on the ballot this fall and the three Republican incumbents come from different sides of that factional divide, with Marty Misjuns on one side and Stephanie Reed and Larry Taylor on the other.
Misjuns has not yet announced whether he will seek reelection, but Taylor (now mayor) and Reed (the former mayor) are and they’re joined by a third candidate, Chris Boswell, to form a slate they’re calling “Team Lynchburg.” Multiple other candidates are now emerging who aren’t on that slate and would seem to fall on the other side. That means when Lynchburg Republicans nominate their three candidates for the council, they will be choosing between these two factions — or, perhaps, choosing to mix and match. In either case, the party’s decision on who to nominate will come against the backdrop of four years of factional fighting. And that brings us to the process by which those candidates will be nominated.
Before Helmer’s Law, parties were more or less free to pick whatever method they felt was best — and there were often intense intraparty battles in both parties over nomination methods, depending on which candidate felt most advantaged or disadvantaged by a particular process. Over the years, Democrats gravitated toward primaries as their preferred method, but many Republicans have resisted that, ostensibly because Virginia doesn’t register voters by party so there’s always been the fear that Democratic voters will show up for a Republican primary and contaminate the voting pool. This fits into a larger worldview of Republicans taking a stricter view on voting rules than Democrats do, but we’ll leave that for another day.
Helmer’s Law didn’t mandate that parties use primaries but it comes close by requiring parties, if they don’t use primaries, to replicate the state access for certain types of absentee voters: military personnel overseas, students away at college, people with communicable diseases and so forth.
Lynchburg Republicans tried to find a way under the law to construct their own nonprimary nominating system in 2024, but Attorney General Jason Miyares — a Republican — issued an opinion that essentially said “sorry.” That opinion held that while there was a theoretical way to avoid a state-run primary, there was no practical way. Lynchburg Republicans in 2024 held a primary for one city council seat — and, for those affiliated with one faction, the winner in one ward was the “wrong” candidate. (That’s Chris Faraldi of Ward IV, who has been aligned with Reed and Taylor on the council and against Misjuns.)
Republicans have also challenged Helmer’s Law in court, and have been unsuccessful in overturning it — although some believe that the way one such suit was dismissed offers insight into how to design a process that will pass muster under Helmer’s Law. That brings us to where we are now. The Lynchburg Republican City Committee (aligned with what I’ll call the Misjuns faction, simply for lack of another name) has voted to hold a party-run “firehouse primary” on May 30 rather than hold a state-run primary. A “firehouse primary” is the colorful term for a party-run vote; it’s not necessarily at a firehouse (although this one will be) and it technically isn’t a primary, which are run by the state. The English language can be confusing.
In any case, Misjuns sees this party-run process, in which the party vets who can take part, as a clear example of Republicans choosing Republican nominees. Faraldi and Reed have argued that the rules for this primary prevent some voters from taking part. “Voting is limited to a single location, on a single day, between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.,” Faraldi said in a statement. “That means many working Republicans — including nurses, firefighters, police officers, retail workers, postal employees, and service industry workers — will be unable to participate.”
Helmer has asked Attorney Jay Jones — a Democrat — for a formal opinion on whether Lynchburg Republicans are breaking the law.
That’s where we are now. Here’s where this could go.
Scenario 1: Jones could intervene and shut down the Lynchburg Republican firehouse primary as the nominating method
OK, “shut down” is probably not the right phrase because people have a constitutional right to peaceful assembly, but the point is the attorney general could take some legal action to prevent Lynchburg Republicans from using a party-run process as the nominating method. I’m not entirely sure how this could happen, and the Lynchburg Republican City Committee believes it has a legally defensible process. However, anytime there’s legal action, the outcome is uncertain, so if we’re reviewing potential scenarios we need to acknowledge that this is one of them.
Scenario 2: Lynchburg Republicans could establish a precedent that there is a way for parties to nominate candidates under Helmer’s Law without using a state-run primary
This could come through inaction on Jones’ part — or if Jones intervened and lost. If this scenario comes to pass, this would have statewide implications and there may be other Republican committees that will then look to Lynchburg for guidance. Lynchburg party chair Veronica Bratton has said the committee hopes to “light the way” on finding a way to avoid being forced into a state-run primary.
If there’s a third scenario possible, I haven’t imagined it yet. This seems an “either/or” situation — either Lynchburg Republicans will have to use a state-run primary or they won’t.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume Lynchburg Republicans prevail in using a firehouse primary. Here are some potential outcomes:
A relatively small number of people could keep the top two vote-getters in 2022 off the 2026 ballot
We have no idea how many people will participate in this year’s firehouse primary. Faraldi notes that 225 people voted in the party’s 2022 firehouse primary, before Helmer’s Law took effect. Since then, there have been three Republican primaries that involve all of Lynchburg. The 2024 Republican presidential primary saw 5,140 voters in Lynchburg, that year’s Republican congressional primary saw 5,223 voters. Lynchburg Republicans that year had a primary in one of the four wards; that election drew 2,051 voters.
The point is that a state-run primary would almost certainly involve more voters than a party-run event with limited hours and no absentee option for most voters, so there’s a scenario where a few hundred people wind up denying renomination to two candidates (Reed and Taylor) who four years ago received 12,287 and 11,658 votes. That’s the argument for a state-run primary; the counterargument is that parties should have say over who takes part in their nomination process.
Ranked-choice voting could also deny renomination to Reed and Taylor
Generally speaking, Democrats are more open to ranked-choice voting than Republicans are. Several years ago, Lynchburg Republicans passed a resolution against ranked-choice voting. Now they’re using it in this firehouse primary when they don’t have to. Democrats just used firehouse primaries (which are still allowed in special elections) in nominating a bunch of legislative candidates in the General Assembly when vacancies have arisen, and they’ve used the traditional first-past-the-post system where whoever gets the most votes wins, even if that’s not a majority.
Bratton says the party could have as many as 12 candidates seeking the three nominations available. She says seven have filed so far (although not the three on “Team Lynchburg”). She says the party is using ranked-choice voting “to be able to get a majority since we have so many candidates and three spots to fill.”
That is a standard argument in favor of ranked-choice voting: that it helps produce a majority consensus. In a plurality system, a candidate could win with a plurality even if a majority of the party is opposed to him or her — a function of the vote being split. It’s easy to picture a scenario where Reed and Taylor lead the voting, but don’t secure a majority — and ranked-choice votes wind up picking other candidates. (For that matter, it’s easy to picture the same scenario with Misjuns, too, if he runs. That is the nature of ranked-choice voting, either pro or con.)
The ‘Team Lynchburg’ candidates don’t have to run as Republicans but the risk is electing Democrats instead
Virgina has a “sore loser” law. If you run and lose in a primary, you can’t get on the ballot as an independent in the general election. That wouldn’t apply to a firehouse primary, since it’s not a state process.
The Team Lynchburg candidates could run in a firehouse primary, lose and still make the fall ballot as independents if they chose to do that. Or they could bypass the firehouse primary altogether.
There’s precedent for this, although not necessarily in Lynchburg. In 1994, former Republican Attorney General Marshall Coleman ran for U.S. Senate as an “independent Republican” when some Republicans weren’t happy with the party’s official nominee, Oliver North. In Roanoke (a place Lynchburg probably doesn’t want to look to for guidance), there’s a history of business-backed independent slates, from the Roanoke Forward ticket of 1976 to the For the City slate in 2006.
There is some risk involved: splitting the Republican vote and letting Democrats win. While Lynchburg is generally a Republican-voting city, Democrats do come close enough that Republicans can’t afford much of a split. Last fall, the Republican candidate for governor won Lynchburg with just 50.4% of the vote, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor took 51.58%, the Republican candidate for attorney general 54.08%. In the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump carried Lynchburg with 52.87% of the vote. In 2020, Joe Biden carried Lynchburg with 49.6% of the vote.
That’s why the Republican nomination for the city council in Lynchburg is such a valuable thing to have — and why there’s now a precedent-setting fight over how those nominations should be decided.
Want more politics and analysis?
On this week’s Cardinal podcast, I talk with host Dutchie Jessee about how April will be a consequential month in Virginia politics.
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