Republican Party of Virginia
The Republican Party of Virginia is the Virginia chapter of the Republican Party. It is based at the Richard D. Obenshain Center in Richmond. As of 2026, it holds none of the three statewide elected offices, a minority in both houses of the General Assembly, and 5 out of 11 U.S. House seats.
History
Antebellum
Five Virginians attended the first national organizing convention of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh. John Curtiss Underwood, Rye, and H. Carpenter were the state's delegates to the 1856 Republican National Convention. They wanted to cast forty-five votes, three per congressional district and six at-large, but the convention only allotted them nine votes. They refused to vote in protest on both ballots. The delegation initially supported David Wilmot for the vice-presidential nomination, but later supported William L. Dayton.Underwood formed the party's newspaper in Wheeling, the first in any of the border states using financial aid from William H. Seward. Underwood also received backing from Horace Greeley and Eli Thayer to form a colony for northern workers in Ceredo.
The first state convention was held on September 18, 1856, while Underwood was in another state due to threats of violence. William E. Stevenson, a future governor of West Virginia, was indicted for distributing an anti-slavery pamphlet. John C. Frémont received 291 votes in the state with 280 from the northwest.
Republicans, such as Cassius Marcellus Clay and Underwood, viewed John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry as damaging to the party. Almost all of Abraham Lincoln's support in the 1860 election came from around Wheeling. The Republicans supported Francis Harrison Pierpont's unionist Virginia government during the Civil War.
1860s
In June 1865, the Radical Republicans, which included many of the party's founders, held a convention in Alexandria which supported black suffrage. A rival Republican convention opposed to Pierpont was held in May 1866, by former Whigs under the leadership of John Botts, and formed the Union Republican Party. The convention passed resolutions criticizing Pierpont's government, supporting disenfranchising Confederates, and supporting qualified black suffrage. James W. Hunnicutt, who found most of his support among black people and the Union League, also vied for leadership of the party.Senator Henry Wilson, at the request of Botts, had the Second Reconstruction Act conduct voting by ballot, which Botts believed would increase white support for Republicans. Wilson unsuccessfully attempted to have the act structured to result in Pierpont administering the constitutional convention election rather than the military commander. Hunnicutt's supporters initially controlled the 1868 constitutional convention and called for property confiscations. The Pierpont and Botts factions, and Horace Greeley feared that Hunnicutt's faction would ruin the electoral chances of the party.
Edward McPherson granted printing contracts to Hunnicutt's Richmond New Nation, but Hunnicutt complained that a majority of the contracts were given to the Alexandria Virginia State Journal.
One-third of the delegates to the constitutional convention were black. Underwood, a Radical who was friends with Greeley, was selected as president. Elihu B. Washburne and Schuyler Colfax advocated for the convention to be generous towards the voting rights of former Confederates while Hunnicutt supported disenfranchisement. The constitution written by the convention disfranchised a large number of Confederates and required loyalty oaths for local and state officials. John Schofield opposed the loyalty oath as it would not allow for enough men to fill offices.
Schofield removed Pierpont, who was appealing to the Radicals to aid in his election, from the governorship stating that his term had expired under the current constitution. Schofield sought a moderate and initially offered the position to Alexander Rives, but he declined and Henry H. Wells was appointed instead. Wells received the Republican gubernatorial nomination against other nominees, including Hunnicutt, but the loyalty oath requirement was maintained despite another attempt by Schofield. Schofield and Congress refused to finance the elections. The Radicals supported Wells while the conservatives and moderates supported Gilbert Carlton Walker, who won the election.
Later history
Virginia Republicans were active in fighting for the Union side in the American Civil War and helped lead the formation of the Restored Government of Virginia as well as the secession of what became the state of West Virginia. Republicans Francis Harrison Pierpont and Daniel Polsley were respectively elected the governor and lieutenant governor of the Restored Government, with Pierpont eventually taking power as the de facto governor of Virginia after the previous Democratic governor William Smith was removed from office and arrested. Two more Republicans would hold office for governor, Henry H. Wells and Gilbert Carlton Walker.Republican fortunes turned downward as the Redeemer movement gathered apace and the Reconstruction era ended. A brief upturn occurred when William Mahone formed the Readjuster Party, a bi-racial populist coalition of Democrats and Republicans which held its height of power from 1870 to 1883. After the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1902, which drafted and promulgated a new constitution which disfranchised almost all African Americans in the commonwealth, the Republican Party ceased to be an effective political party in Virginia.
The party reached its nadir of representation in the General Assembly, reaching handfuls of representation in either chamber and in the U.S. House until after 1964. Historically, from the late 19th into the mid-20th centuries, the 9th and 2nd congressional districts were the friendliest terrain for Republicans in the state, encompassing areas which border West Virginia. Virginia Republicans managed to help Herbert Hoover and Charles Curtis win the 1928 election but would only regain their statewide competitiveness after Dwight D. Eisenhower carried the state in 1952. Linwood Holton would be elected in 1969 as the first Republican governor of Virginia in the 20th century, inaugurating an era of competitive elections between the two major parties.
Current elected officials
Republicans are the minority in both the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate, and five of the state's eleven U.S. House seats are held by Republicans. As of 2026, the party hold no statewide offices.Members of Congress
U.S. Senate
- None
U.S. House of Representatives
Out of the 11 seats Virginia is apportioned in the U.S. House of Representatives, five are held by Republicans:| District | Member | Photo |
| 1st | ||
| 2nd | ||
| 5th | ||
| 6th | ||
| 9th |
Statewide offices
- None
Leadership
Ed Gillespie was elected as the new Chairman of the RPV on December 2, 2006. He resigned on June 13, 2007, to become the counselor to President George W. Bush. Mike Thomas served as interim chairman until July 21 when former Lieutenant Governor of Virginia John H. Hager was elected chairman. On April 9, 2007, the RPV named Fred Malek to serve as the Finance Chairman and Lisa Gable to serve as the Finance Committee Co-Chair.
On May 31, 2008, Hager was defeated in his bid for re-election at a statewide GOP convention by a strongly conservative member of the House of Delegates, Jeff Frederick of Prince William County. Frederick, who was then 32 years old, was the fifth party chairman in five years. On April 4, 2009, Frederick was removed from the position by RPV's State Central Committee, in a move backed by most of the senior GOP establishment. Many argued that Frederick's election and later removal was a war within the party between insiders and outsiders, or grassroots versus establishment Republicans. After his removal, Frederick considered seeking the chairman job again at the party's May 2009 convention, but decided against it. Pat Mullins, who was then the chairman of the Louisa County party unit and formerly the chairman of the Fairfax County party unit, was selected on May 2, 2009, to serve in the interim before a special election at state party convention later that month. Mullins won the special election at the May 30, 2009, convention, defeating Bill Stanley, the Franklin County chairman. Mullins was re-elected at the party's June 2012 convention. Mullins announced his retirement on November 5, 2014, a day after the Virginia GOP had a strong showing in the 2014 elections. 10th District Republican Committee chairman John Whitbeck was elected on January 24, 2015, by the party's State Central Committee to serve out the remainder of Mullins's term.
Whitbeck faced a challenge for the chairmanship for the 2016 election at the party's state convention from Vince Haley, who unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination for state senate in the 12th state Senate district in 2015. Haley withdrew his candidacy in early 2016, then tried to re-enter before the convention. At the convention, the party nominations committee ruled that Haley did not qualify to seek the office, and Whitbeck was re-elected unopposed to a full four-year term. Whitbeck resigned from his position on July 21, 2018, due to differences with Corey Stewart, the party's nominee for U.S. Senate in that year's race for U.S. Senate. In September 2018, Jack R. Wilson, the party's 4th Congressional District Chairman since 2007 and a lawyer from Chesterfield County, was elected to fill the balance of Whitbeck's term. On August 15, 2020, former Delegate Rich Anderson was elected to a four-year term.
The current chairman is Senator Mark Peake, who was elected April 12, 2025, to fill the vacancy created by Anderson's nomination as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs.