The Republican State Central Committee meeting in late February.
The Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) has yet to finalize the nomination method for candidates running for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. While party leadership asked for feedback from all local unit leaders about voting remotely in a convention, some of those unit leaders sent party leadership a separate letter expressing disappointment in how the nomination process has played out over the last few months.
The State Central Committee (SCC) has struggled with finalizing the nomination method for statewide candidates since they first decided in December to use a convention. Then after several failed attempts from members of the committee to change it to an unassembled convention or a primary, the party seemed to be at an impasse due to not legally being allowed to hold a large in-person gathering during a pandemic.
Eventually, at a meeting in February, the committee decided on a drive-thru convention at Liberty University. That plan only seemed promising for a few days and now has to be changed after RPV and Liberty University officials decided that an in-person, one-location convention of any kind is not feasible right now.
To address this problem quickly, RPV’s Chairman Rich Anderson scheduled a meeting of the SCC for this Friday. One of the items expected to be on the agenda is an amendment that would allow for remote convention voting locations across the Commonwealth.
Being proactive, Anderson sent a letter Monday to the local Republican unit chairs requesting that they inform him of whether they would want to choose the locations for remote voting themselves and handle to operation in their area or leave it up to each congressional district committee to choose and execute. “As part of our planning process, the SCC wants to consider your feelings on how remote voting locations are selected for delegates to cast their ballots to nominate our candidates for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General,” Anderson wrote in the letter.
This amendment that would allow for remote voting would also resemble an unassembled convention, which is a change that the SCC repeatedly voted against several times since December.
Frustrated with the confusion, eight local GOP committee chairs expressed their feelings in a letter crafted primarily by Tim Parrish, the chair of the Prince William County GOP Committee. The letter was sent to Anderson and the SCC on Tuesday morning. “We are writing to express our profound disappointment at the recent conduct of the State Central Committee, and our request on resolution for a clear path forward,” the letter reads. “Frankly, we need our decision makers to make decisions and our leaders to lead. The long delay and lack of substantive information regarding the nomination method of our statewide offices has become a debilitating aspect of leading our party at the local unit level.”
The other signers of the letter are the chairs of the Fairfax, Chesapeake, Danville, Greene, Fauquier, Madison, and Sussex GOP committees.
As they are the people on the ground that will be responsible for implementing the process that the SCC chooses, the authors of the letter expressed fear of being ill-equipped with little time left to prepare. “As of today, we stand just two short months shy of an assembled convention,” they wrote to Anderson. “Republican unit leaders across the Commonwealth will be expected to execute the haphazard decisions of this body, having had no input as to its particulars and with details remaining unknown. We have been grossly ill-equipped to answer the litany of questions coming from our unit members, potential delegates and members of the media concerning the embarrassing spectacle that has become of this process.”
Additionally, there is a large slate of candidates seeking the Republican nomination that still do not know how to prepare. There are seven Republican candidates in total, but the four competitive candidates are state Senator Amanda Chase, former House Speaker Kirk Cox, media executive Pete Snyder, and former CEO of The Carlyle Group Glenn Youngkin.
The campaigns continue to move forward regardless of what happens with the state party’s discussions. “Our campaign is prepared for whatever method, means, and month the state party decides,” Glenn Youngkin’s spokesperson Macaulay Porter said Tuesday. “Glenn Youngkin will win the nomination, unite the party, and win in November.”
Pete Snyder recently told the New York Times that he is ready to compete for the nomination no matter the method. “Like thousands of high school athletes across Virginia who’ve been kept off the athletic field for a year, I can’t wait to get on the field and compete. I’m going to run hard and win the Republican nomination regardless of the method of nomination, but it’s time for the Virginia GOP to decide the rules, let the competition begin and let Virginia Republicans decide their nominees.”
A spokesperson for Cox says their position remains the same. “It’s up to the SCC to determine the form the nominating process takes, but they need to make a decision.”
State Senator Amanda Chase is not pleased with the process so far. She has threatened to run as a third-party candidate several times and she reiterated that in an interview Tuesday. “Final decisions should have all been determined in December of 2020. The Republican Party of Virginia has continued to fumble the ball at a time when ‘We the People’ are tired of living under a tyrannical Governor,” she said. “If the Republican Party doesn’t make final decisions before they require Governor candidates to pay $14,000 on March 26 at 5 pm to run under the Republican banner, I will be forced to put all options on the table.”
Richard Meagher, associate professor of political science at Randolph Macon College says that while the general election is still several months away, right now it is hard to see unity happening in the Republican Party. “November is still a long way away and anything could happen, but it is hard to see a path from their current fighting to a party unified behind a single candidate this fall,” Meagher said. “If there’s ever a time to have your act together and present a unified front, it would be now. Instead, they’re falling apart.”
The SCC is scheduled to meet Friday, March 12 at 7 pm. Their meetings are streamed on the Republican Party of Virginia Facebook page.
“Our request is simple, and our suggestion is of benefit to all Virginia Republicans,” the eight local party chairs wrote. “Dismount your high horses, abandon your personal ambitions, and shroud yourselves in your responsibility to represent the best interests of this Party and the millions of Virginia Republicans who desire to win again.”
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