8 Months Before Statewide Elections, Virginia Republicans and Democrats Changing Party Leaders

With Virginia’s governor’s mansion and control of both houses of the Virginia General Assembly up for grabs in less than eight months, both the Republican and Democratic parties in Virginia are changing leaders.

Last week, President Donald Trump announced that he was nominating Republican Party of Virginia Chairman Rich Anderson to become the assistant secretary of the Air Force. The retired Colonel released a statement saying, “I am grateful to the president for his trust and confidence,” and understandably jumped at the opportunity to lead the service branch he served for 30 years.

Democratic Party Chairwoman Susan Swecker is also stepping down after a decade of leadership that saw the party take control of both houses of the Virginia General Assembly. She said in her announcement to the party: “I believe the time is right to pass the torch to a new leader who can continue to build on our successes and further strengthen our party.”

Both parties have a short window of time before they have to choose their next leader. The Democrats will vote on March 22, and the Republicans are looking to vote on April 12.

So far, four people have declared their candidacies: state Sen. Lamont Bagby, a Democrat from Henrico County, will face Democratic Party 10th Congressional District Chair Zach Pruckowski and community organizer Josh Stanfield to lead the Democrats, while Republican state Sen. Mark Peake is the only candidate thus far for the GOP. Both Peake and Bagby have indicated that they will remain in the Virginia Senate if they become party chair.

Peake, whose candidacy has already been endorsed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin as well as the front-runner for this year’s Republican gubernatorial nomination, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, told The Daily Signal that a unified party is his main goal. He said he has a plan to achieve that by the time voting begins in September for the November elections: “It’s availability, accessibility, transparency, and fairness.” 

That is the task for both parties this year. The main job of the party chair is making sure the local units have all the tools they will need to turn out their voters. “You’ve got to have the mailing list, walk list [for door-to-door campaigning],” Peake said.

Beyond that, the tools would mean little without the knowledge of how to best use them. “We have to have training sessions so that [the unit chairs] can train their volunteers,” he added.

Stanfield, the Democrat community organizer, seemed to indicate that there is some friction within the Democrat’s state committee in an interview with the Virginia Mercury when he said that his goal as chair would be “this sort of idea of actually empowering members of the central committee to have a say, which means more regular voting on a larger range of issues.”

The party chairs will inherit organizations in better positions than their predecessors had. The Virginia Democrats had two major victories in November—reelecting Sen. Tim Kaine and delivering the state’s 13 electoral votes to Vice President Kamala Harris. And the GOP can point to Youngkin’s victory in 2021 and several seat-flips from Democrat to Republican in 2023’s General Assembly election.

However, the biggest wild card may be how they manage the tumult among Virginia’s federal government workforce as Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency’s cuts and layoffs are hitting Virginia particularly hard.

Peake added that, as always, fundraising will be key: “We’ve got to fundraise at the national level. We’ve got to get the [Republican National Committee] involved. We have got to get President Trump involved.”

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