On the second front, how a convention would work, Republicans are grappling with a state ban on most gatherings of more than 10 people. As a result, the party cannot hold a personal meeting of several thousand people. Party leaders are trying to change their rules to allow for a congress that will be held in dozens of locations in Virginia.
This requires the approval of three-quarters of the members of the state central committee – a threshold that has not yet been reached, as 31 of the 72 members of the committee are campaigning for a primary school. In other words, these Republicans are trying to block the possibility of a convention in the hope that eventually a primary will have to be held.
“The fact that there is a minority faction that has lost and is standing in the way of a safe convention to try to get the primary that they can’t win fair – that says a lot about them,” said Patti Lyman, who Republican national committee woman for Virginia. “All of their arguments can be reduced to the following: We have lost and we don’t like it.”
Ms. Chase, who still argued with less than a week in Mr. Trump’s presidency that he could still be inaugurated for a second term, said Thursday that she “does not trust conventions” to which she is wrongly restricting electoral access Members of the military and others who cannot make it to a personal website.
“If we’re going to win as Republicans, we have to get more voters, who vote Republicans, rather than fewer,” she said. “Stop creating so many barriers for people who would normally choose.”
Some proponents of a convention advocate ranking voting, a system promoted by progressives elsewhere. The dispute threatens to undermine the already tough Republican struggle in this year’s elections and to extend democratic control of the state.
At the center of the party’s argument is a crowded group of Republican gubernatorial candidates, each with a candidate from the Trump and Establishment wings of the GOP and two wealthy wildcards. The main candidates are Ms. Chase; Kirk Cox, a former State House Speaker who is the party’s elected legislature favorite; Pete Snyder, a technology millionaire who lost an offer for lieutenant governor nomination at a party conference in 2013; and Glenn Youngkin, an even richer former private equity executive who is new to politics.
