Republicans in the 11th District held their biennial convention yesterday, Saturday May 7th, to choose their 11th District Chairman; on the same day, they held a firehouse primary to choose a nominee to go against Gerry Connolly. The new 11th District lost its Prince William component, and now is entirely based in Fairfax County, with the small enclave of Fairfax City included.
SCC Member Mike Ginsberg won, defeating former SCC member Fredy Burgos. There are some inaccurate numbers going around from some sources who are more used to copying and pasting content from VPAP.org [1]. The actual results were:
Weighted Vote:
Ginsberg: 451
Burgos: 425
Raw Votes:
Fairfax County: 179 – 171 (+8)
Fairfax City: 12 – 8 (+4)
11th District Total: 191 – 179 (+12)
In the firehouse primary, Jim Myles won a convincing margin for the nomination, besting runner-up (and 2020 nominee) Manga Anantatmula 959 to 661. Congratulations to Chairman Ginsberg and Jim Myles!
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There is an historic kismet to Ginsberg’s win. Flashback to four years ago, when Mike Ginsberg ran for Fairfax County Republican Chairman against Tim Hannigan. Fredy Burgos, at the time on the SCC from the 11th District, supported Hannigan and posted on Facebook that voters should support Hannigan, a Christian, over Ginsberg, who is Jewish, as part of their “duty” [2] (misquoting John Jay in the process).
That ignited a firestorm [3] that finally prompted the VA GOP’s State Central Committee to take the extraordinary step of expelling Burgos from the SCC [4], a vote that took a supermajority vote to carry. This came following repeated controversies and warnings over his bigoted postings and rhetoric, including repeated anti-Muslim posts [5] , anti-Catholic posts [6], and condemning interracial marriage as a cancer [6].
After losing his leadership position, Burgos doubled down on his bigoted postings, and in particular ramped up his vitriol against immigrants, especially legal immigrants [7]. He then decided to run for 11th District Chairman in 2020, losing to Melissa Beaudoin [8] by a sizeable 55% – 45% margin.
This year’s race was much closer, which is troubling to hear that so many Fairfax Republicans are so receptive of Burgos’s bigoted ramblings and ideology. Nevertheless, this continues a string of losses for Burgos, which is always worth noting.
Photo credit: RPV Chair Rich Anderson’s Facebook