Richmond, VA — Yesterday, the ever-escalating chaos and disarray that consumes Virginia Republicans continued when a group of local GOP leaders denounced the disastrous Republican Party of Virginia in a scathing letter to the State Central Committee. 

As the Virginia GOP careens towards a self-professed “calamitous disaster,” frontrunner Amanda Chase is threatening to run as an independent if she is treated unfairly and allegations of a rigged primary process abound. All eyes are on the Virginia GOP ahead of another chaotic meeting this Friday.

Read key excerpts below and see the full report here:

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Eight Va. GOP leaders denounce state committee dysfunction
By Patrick Wilson 

Eight local Republican Party chairs in Virginia sent a letter to the GOP’s governing body denouncing members for their dysfunction in coming up with a method to nominate candidates for statewide office this year.

“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,” reads the letter, sent Tuesday. [...]

Republicans haven’t won a statewide race in Virginia since 2009, and fighting among leadership this year on the party’s State Central Committee is overshadowing the GOP candidates for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

The committee has been split between backers of a convention or a state-run primary to nominate candidates. Those supporting a convention have prevailed, but because of COVID-19 restrictions on gatherings, many Republicans fear that an in-person convention won’t be possible and that the State Central Committee may end up selecting nominees, instead of GOP voters.

The deadline to request a primary has passed, and the State Central Committee last month voted to approve a “drive-in convention” on the campus of Liberty University.

But the university said the next day that an agreement hadn’t been reached. And state GOP Chairman Rich Anderson said last week that bringing up to 4,000 automobiles and 70 buses to a single location isn’t possible. So the party’s governing body still needs to figure out a plan.

Other local GOP chairs who signed the letter are from Fairfax, Fauquier, Sussex, Madison and Greene counties and the cities of Chesapeake and Danville.

“We are writing to express our profound disappointment at the recent conduct of the State Central Committee, and our request of resolution for a clear path forward,” they wrote. “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.” [...]

“It seems that because many State Central Committee members cannot use their influence to win general elections, they are wielding their influence to showcase power and control over this nomination process.”

Anderson has called a meeting of the State Central Committee for 7 p.m. Friday.

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