RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Republicans have replaced their party chair with a former state legislator in a move designed to energize a party struggling to win statewide races and losing power recently at the General Assembly.
Former state Del. Rich Anderson of Prince William County won the party’s election on Saturday after voting delegates eliminated incumbent Chair Jack Wilson in the first round of voting, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. Anderson ultimately defeated Michael Schoelwer, chair of the Lancaster County GOP Committee, in the second and final round.
Anderson criticized the party’s leadership under Wilson, a Chesterfield County lawyer who became state chair in September 2018. In a video message to voting delegates, Anderson referred to “a dysfunctional and defeated state party led by timid and tepid leadership that has lost its will to fight and win again.”
A Republican candidate hasn’t won a statewide election in Virginia since 2009. And Democrats took full control of the legislature in January for the first time in a generation.
Anderson is retired from the Air Force and was first elected to the House of Delegates in 2009. He lost his seat in 2017 to a Democrat and tried unsuccessfully to win it back in 2019. Three of Virginia’s four remaining U.S. House members were among Anderson’s supporters for chair.
Looking to November, a Republican candidate for president hasn’t won Virginia’s electoral votes since George W. Bush in 2004. GOP U.S. Senate nominee Daniel Gade faces a tough task to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Warner. Races for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general are in 2021.
