Fifth District GOP elects Jon Berkley as chairman

Jon BerkleyAfter a credentials scuffle involving the seating of delegates from Campbell County, a contentious Fifth Congressional District convention elected Jon Berkley, district vice-chair and unit chairman from Charlotte County, to succeed outgoing chairman Bill Stanley of Franklin County.

The battle for control of the convention began when Chris Shores nominated former Speaker of the House of Delegates Vance Wilkins to be temporary convention chairman. The nomination was ruled out of order because Wilkins is not a qualified voter of the Fifth Congressional District. Shores nominated a substitute, outgoing committee secretary Sharon Jones, but she was defeated by John Marsden, former Prince Edward County unit chairman, in a lengthy division of the convention. (Marsden, an attorney, has played the temporary chairman role in previous district conventions.)

Once a temporary chair (and secretary: Jones) was in place, the first order of business was to approve the credentials committee report, normally a routine rubber stamp.

The credentials committee report was in two parts: first, a motion to approve 440 properly filed delegates and second, to refrain from seating conditional delegates from Campbell County.

There was a lot of hubbub in the convention owing to the dispute about the Campbell County delegation. Last week the Fifth District Committee had narrowly voted to sustain an appeal by certain Campbell County Republicans challenging the results of that county’s mass meeting. The committee refused to seat the slate of delegates that had been elected by the mass meeting but recommended to the convention that properly pre-filed delegates from Campbell County be seated.

The credentials committee of the convention overruled that recommendation (which was nothing more than a recommendation, as the committee’s hands were tied by RPV rules) and instead reported that no Campbell County delegates be seated.

Chris Shores moved a substitute to the committee’s report, calling for the convention to seat all the delegates present from Campbell County.

A voice vote was indeterminate, so there was a division of the house that resulted in a defeat of Shores’ amendment and subsequently approval of the credentials report. Campbell County’s delegates were not seated.

There were three nominees for district chairman: Berkley, Bruce Hartwick, and Mark Lloyd. In his speech to the convention, Hartwick withdrew and endorsed Lloyd. (Hartwick subsequently received zero votes in the chairman’s election.)

In the end, all of the key issues voted on by the convention were decided by approximately the same number of weighted votes. The temporary chairman was elected with 519 votes. Shores’ amendment to the credentials committee report was defeated with 519 votes. Berkley was elected chairman by 519 votes. As I recall, the losing votes in all three contests were about 435. (If my memory is faulty and the numbers were different, I welcome corrections in the comments section.)

The convention attracted a good number of observers from outside the Fifth District, including Jim Parmelee, Russ Moulton, Jamie Radtke, and Susan Stimpson. There might have been others I missed, but these were among the visitors I saw myself.

All four candidates for the U.S. Senate nomination spoke to the convention — Tony DeTora, Ed Gillespie, Shak Hill, and Chuck Moss — as did Congressman Robert Hurt, who was unopposed for his nomination to run for a third term.

For the record, here is Jon Berkley’s first interview with the news media following his election as Fifth District Committee chairman:

Rick Sincere Interviews Jon Berkley

Any Bearing Drift readers who attended the gathering at Hampden-Sydney College are invited to share their own impressions of the event below.

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