Virginia's Sixth District Republican Committee voted 19 to 5 on Tuesday night to uphold an appeal that nullifies the Warren County Republican Committee chairman election held February 12, a contest marred by allegations of turned-away voters, Democrat participation, and an unauthorized slashing of party membership rolls.
Scott Lloyd, a former Trump administration official who lost the WCRC chairmanship race to local attorney David Silek by 19 votes, filed the appeal after gathering affidavits from numerous individuals who said they showed up to vote at the Front Royal Volunteer Fire Department that night and were blocked from entering. The committee members who gathered in Fisherville, Virginia, found his case convincing by a nearly four-to-one margin, with Chairman John Massoud and one other member abstaining.
The decision does not end the fight. Silek has 30 days to lodge his own appeal with the Republican Party of Virginia. But the lopsided vote sends a clear signal: the February 12 mass meeting was too compromised to stand.
The Warren County Republican Committee mass meeting was advertised for 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., with registration beginning at 6:00 p.m. Over 400 people showed up to participate. Former WCRC chairman Tom McFadden Jr. told Breitbart News there were already about 200 people at the venue when he arrived at 5:30 p.m., half an hour before registration was even supposed to open.
"They were all 'his' people," McFadden said, referring to Silek's supporters.
Lloyd's appeal packet described a chaotic scene. Affidavits recounted that Democrats were given ballots during the voting process. Multiple conservatives were turned away from the meeting and kept from voting by George Cline, the husband of Warren County Sheriff Crystal Cline. The appeal placed the number of people denied entry at somewhere between nine and more than forty individuals.
George Cline himself admitted in a Facebook comment soon after the mass meeting to turning away at least nine people. Massoud, the Sixth District chairman, previously acknowledged the mass meeting was a "hectic event" and confirmed he was aware that "at least three" Democrats were present.
When the votes were counted, Silek received 225 to Lloyd's 206. That 19-vote margin looks different when set against the dozens of people allegedly barred from casting ballots, and the Democrats who apparently were not.
The ballot irregularities were only half the problem. After the election, Cheryl Cullers, the Silek-allied chairwoman of the Warren County Board of Supervisors, quietly announced that the WCRC would immediately reduce its membership from 251 spots to 102. Lloyd argued in his appeal that there was "no authorization for limiting the membership to 102," calling the move an "unauthorized and unacceptable disenfranchisement of Republican voters."
That purge drew pointed questioning at Tuesday's hearing. Melanie Salins, a Warren County Public Schools Board member, pressed Silek on the contradiction at the heart of his defense.
"To quote Mr. Silek, he said that Reagan said that the party grows when the Republican Party opens their doors, but then admits that Democrats came to vote, but meanwhile, our membership has now been cut in half. Which is it? This is not logically consistent. Are we trying to grow the party, as Reagan said, or are we trying to shrink the party?"
Salins also asked a question that went to the core of the dispute: "Why is it that people who paid their dues and applied for membership, longtime volunteers, loyal Republicans, even endorsed Republican elected officials were [kicked out]?"
The Republican Party of Virginia's official plan requires anyone who voted in another party's primary within the past five years to renounce that affiliation in writing before participating in a Republican committee election. Lloyd told the hearing that the February 12 meeting "did not collect any of these renunciations." That detail matters: if Democrats voted without renouncing their prior affiliation, the process violated the party's own rules. The broader pattern of election integrity disputes across the country gives this kind of procedural breakdown added weight.
Silek spoke at length in his own defense. He addressed Lloyd's criticism of his political donations head-on, acknowledging contributions to Democrats but framing them as routine legal-profession courtesies.
"Two friends of mine ran as Democrats. One in southwest Virginia. She was a law school classmate. And another attorney in Manassas ran for office. I gave them a donation."
He also addressed donations to Amy Ashworth, who was elected Prince William County Commonwealth's Attorney in 2019. Public records show Silek contributed a total of $2,500 to Ashworth, including $1,000 to her 2023 reelection campaign. Silek told the hearing that "the first time she ran, she wasn't a Soros person. The second time she ran, she was a Soros person." He added: "If you're doing business with her office, as my office does, when she asked for donations from law firms, people do that. Republicans do that."
Silek also pushed back against the claim that his supporters were outsiders or Democrats. "Petitioners have spent a considerable amount of energy suggesting that people who voted for me should not have been there, that there were Democrats or outsiders or people who do not belong in the Republican Party," he said. He invoked Ronald Reagan: "Reagan Democrats did not come to the party through purity test. Trump Republicans did not come to the Republican Party through purity test."
But Lloyd's appeal was not about purity tests. It was about ballot control. "So where there's no ballot control, there's no confidence that there is any accuracy, so we have to set aside this vote," Lloyd told the committee. The distinction matters. A party that welcomes new members is one thing. A party meeting where Democrats receive ballots without written renunciations, where dozens of conservatives are physically turned away, and where the membership rolls are slashed afterward is something else entirely.
Shenandoah County Sheriff Timothy Carter, who also chairs his county's Republican committee, moved to dismiss the appeal. He argued that ordering a whole new mass meeting over the membership cap made little sense. "If one of the points is that you're asking them to reconsider the number... the 102 to 251... but to have them have an entire mass meeting and to do it all over again, it just doesn't make any sense to me," Carter said.
His motion failed for lack of support. Sixth District committee member Curt Lilly offered a sharp reply: "We don't do what is right because it's easy, we do what it's right because it's right."
Committee member Willie Deutsch then moved to uphold Lloyd's appeal. The final vote, 19 to 5, with two abstentions, was decisive. Silek, seeing the numbers, had already left the podium before the vote concluded. That kind of decisive conservative win in an intraparty fight has become a recurring theme in Virginia Republican politics.
Massoud reminded the room that the process was far from over. "I'm going to remind everybody that tonight is not the end. It's halfway through the process," he said. "The State Central body can either A, reinstate Mr. Silek, or B, call for a new mass meeting."
If Silek files an appeal within 30 days, a special five-seat RPV committee, composed of members outside the Sixth District, will hear it. Two seats will be chosen by Lloyd, two by Silek, and one by both sides. State Chairman Jeff Ryer could also call for the full 78-member RPV State Central Committee to hear the case. Should Silek's appeal fail or should he decide not to pursue it, the Sixth District will hold a new mass meeting for the WCRC.
Silek signaled in a Facebook post that he intends to fight. He called the ruling "extremely disappointing" and said the committee had "ruled in favor of reinstating the previous unsuccessful and failed leadership of the WCRC committee." He added: "We will need to lodge an appeal against this unfavorable ruling with the RPV State Committee." This comes amid a broader stretch of Republican grassroots energy that has produced strong results for conservative candidates across the South.
Warren County resident John Lundberg, who attended the hearing, called Lloyd a "decent human being" and "very well respected." He said he was "extremely pleased" with the outcome. "I'd heard from reasonable sources that Scott was going to win convincingly, and I was hopeful, and it would be about what it was," Lundberg said.
Matthew Perdie, a Warren County resident and Breitbart News video producer who said he was one of the Catholic conservatives removed from the WCRC, offered a more pointed assessment. "Scott Lloyd has become the George Washington of Warren County," Perdie said. "You can see how conservatives and Catholics around him are inspired by how tirelessly he fought and by the strength of his faith."
Perdie added that "conservatives and Catholics have repeatedly been bullied by people in Silek's camp, causing many to mute themselves out of fear." He said Lloyd was "inspiring the community to rise up against local corruption by showing them that Catholics and conservatives can win." That kind of grassroots resolve has echoed in recent Virginia elections where Republican candidates have posted commanding margins.
The Warren County fight is local, but the pattern is not. When party insiders pack a meeting with friendly voters, bar opponents from entering, let non-Republicans cast ballots, and then gut the membership rolls afterward, the grassroots has every right to demand accountability. The Sixth District committee delivered it. Whether the RPV does the same will say a great deal about whether Virginia Republicans are serious about clean elections, starting in their own house.
