Thursday evening, May 14, the Sixth Congressional District Republican Committee met to again consider a new date and location for our quadrennial convention. This convention is important because not only do we elect a new chairman and three regional vice-chairs, but we also elect three representatives from the district to the State Central Committee (SCC), nominate three delegates and three alternates to the Republican National Convention in August, and nominate a presidential elector to vote for Donald Trump should he win Virginia’s popular vote in November.
The committee met electronically via Zoom, and all voting members were present with the exception of one member who sent a proxy.
The first substantive discussion following the opening events and reports, was the election of a SCC representative to complete Nate Boyer’s turn. Nate and his family had moved out of the Sixth District earlier this year. Since our bylaws require that committee members live in the district, Nate resigned when he changed his residence. At our upcoming convention, we will be electing new representatives to full four-year terms. However, due to the Governor’s continuing executive orders, the SCC may meet again prior to our convention, and we wanted our district to have its full complement of representatives. As is required by our bylaws, the notice that we would be electing a replacement for this position went out with the meeting call over two weeks ago. The committee did not provide formal application forms as has often been done in the past, so nominations could be made “from the floor.”
Augusta County’s Mary Beth Swemba had served as a proxy to several SCC meetings, and she has over the years been very active in the Augusta County GOP committee. I had asked her several days ago if she would be interested in taking on that role for the few weeks left until the convention. In her usual gracious manner, she agreed to do so. No one else presented a candidate for the office. Mary Beth was elected unanimously.
The main order of business was to discuss our upcoming district convention. At our last committee meeting, 16 days ago, we had discussed a motion to set a time and place but decided to table the motion until this meeting to 1) see what else the governor would do with his executive orders concerning large meetings and 2) explore additional options for location. A few of us in the past two weeks looked at several potential locations. Two of the locations were just across the line into West Virginia, which is getting back to business faster than Virginia. Very few large facilities are available within our district due to quarantine closings. Following a brisk but cordial discussion, the committee voted to hold our convention on Saturday, July 11, at the Thomas Road Baptist Church (TRBC) in Lynchburg. As a caveat, we have a verbal agreement with the church, but have not yet signed the paperwork. Wendell Walker and I, who are both members of TRBC will complete the negotiations as swiftly as possible.
There are several advantages to TRBC. Registration will be done in the fellowship hall, which opens out directly on the main parking lot. Delegates can enter those doors and be in line to pick up their credentials. Once credentials have been received, delegates will go out the other side of the fellowship hall, cross a hallway and walk straight into the 5,000-seat auditorium. We plan to use the same social distancing regimen that the church has set up for their Sunday services. Delegates will sit in every other row and in every other seat in the occupied rows. This leaves us room to seat 1250 delegates which matches the number of delegates who have been certified. Since many certified delegates do not make it to their conventions, we will have more than enough room to social distance at the event.
Additionally, the cost of using the church is significantly less than what we paid to use James Madison University in 2018. We are able to use the church because three members of the district committee are also members of TRBC.
The committee then voted to set May 26 as the deadline for selection and announcement of convention committees. Those committees include credentials, nominations, rules, arrangements, elections, and registration, plus any other committees deemed necessary.
We were pleased to finally be able to settle on a new date and location for our convention. We need to make our internal leadership selections quickly so that we can get on with our real job, which is defeating Democrats.
Now We Know When and Where
