About two dozen members of Virginia's Sixth District Republican Committee gathered in Fisherville on Tuesday night and voted to nullify a contested February election for chairman of the Warren County Republican Committee, a fight that pitted grassroots conservatives against a faction they call Republicans in Name Only.
The appeal, filed by Scott Lloyd, a former Trump administration official who ran for WCRC chairman, argued that the February 12 mass meeting was marred by ballot control failures, unauthorized voter exclusions, and the participation of Democrats who never signed the required party-affiliation attestation forms. The Sixth District committee sided with Lloyd and ordered a new election, Breitbart News reported.
The outcome is a clear win for conservative activists in the deep-red county outside Washington, D.C., who say their local party apparatus was hijacked by insiders more comfortable with Democrats than with their own base.
The WCRC's election and membership reset took place February 12 at the Front Royal Volunteer Fire Department. Over 400 people showed up, a record-breaking turnout. Whistleblowers described the event as chaotic, disorganized, and shot through with irregularities.
Lloyd's opponent was David Silek, a local attorney who has publicly referred to Christian conservatives as "right wing extremists" for protesting a local library's stock of books pushing transgenderism on children. Silek is closely allied with Warren County Sheriff Crystal Cline, Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Cheryl Cullers, and County Supervisor Hugh Henry. Multiple individuals in that faction, including Sheriff Cline and Henry, have publicly made anti-Catholic remarks.
Silek won the initial vote 225 to 206, a 19-point margin. But Lloyd's appeal packet included affidavits from numerous individuals who said Democrats were given ballots, that credentials committee officials did not track how many ballots went out or to whom, and that known leftists, including the husband of an administrator of a Front Royal Antifa Facebook group, were observed casting votes for WCRC chairman.
The official Republican Party of Virginia 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 stated flatly at the hearing: "The meeting did not collect any of these renunciations."
Perhaps the most damaging allegation involved voters physically prevented from entering the building. George Cline, the sheriff's husband, admitted in a Facebook comment after the mass meeting to turning away at least nine people. Lloyd's appeal placed the range of excluded voters at nine to more than forty, well above Silek's 19-vote margin of victory.
The mass meeting was advertised as running from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., with registration starting at 6:00 p.m. No notice was given that anyone arriving after 7:00 p.m. would be barred from registering. Yet people were turned away at the door after that hour.
Warren County Fire & Rescue Assistant Chief Gerry Maiatico, who served as fire marshal that night, told Breitbart News he asked the Clines to help control crowd flow to avoid fire code violations. Lloyd and Silek had verbally agreed to a protocol allowing more people to enter once others had voted and left. That protocol was not followed.
One individual accused Sheriff Cline, who was not in uniform, of pushing her when she tried to enter the meeting room to vote. Election integrity disputes of this kind, where the mechanics of who gets to participate determine the outcome, have become a flashpoint across the political spectrum.
Former WCRC chairman Tom McFadden Jr. said roughly 200 people were already at the venue when he arrived early at 5:30 p.m., and that most were "definitely" Silek supporters. "They were all 'his' people," McFadden said, noting that "the Catholics", mostly Lloyd supporters, arrived after 6:00 p.m., when the doors were advertised as open.
Beyond the voting irregularities, dozens of longtime committee members were abruptly stripped of their seats. Cullers quietly announced that the WCRC would slash its membership from 251 spots to just 102, effective immediately.
Cullers, despite being allied with Silek and despite sources saying she was supposed to be on a four-year ban from the Republican group due to her PAC's endorsement of Democrats, was inexplicably allowed to lead the WCRC's rules committee that night.
Sheriff Cline handled the stack of roughly 180 membership applications gathered at the meeting. Only the top 102 were accepted. When confronted by Breitbart News at a March county meeting hosted by Cullers, Cline reluctantly admitted to being asked to help sort through applications to determine who would become a member.
Warren County Public Schools Board member Melanie Salins drove the point home at the appeal hearing. She noted that Silek invoked Ronald Reagan's vision of an open, growing Republican Party, then watched as the committee's membership was cut in half under his allies' direction.
"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?"
Salins pressed further: "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? How are these members chosen?"
Silek replied that he was "not quite sure what the actual question was."
Silek attempted to justify his donations to Democrats and his open solicitation of their support. He acknowledged giving money to two Democratic candidates, calling them personal friends, a law school classmate in southwest Virginia and an attorney in Manassas.
Public records show Silek contributed a total of $2,500 to Amy Ashworth, who was elected Prince William County Commonwealth's Attorney in 2019. Silek argued that "the first time she ran, she wasn't a Soros person." But the records also show he donated $1,000 to Ashworth's campaign in 2023, when she ran for reelection. The broader fight over who belongs in the Republican tent and who doesn't is playing out far beyond Warren County.
Silek defended the practice bluntly: "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."
On the question of Democrats voting in the WCRC election without signing the required RPV attestation forms, Silek compared them to Reagan Democrats and Trump supporters who crossed party lines.
"Ronald Reagan understood something that the previous leadership of this committee in Warren County totally forgot. The Republican Party grows when it opens its doors, not when it locks them. Reagan Democrats did not come to the party through purity test. Trump Republicans did not come to the Republican Party through purity test."
He closed by calling the appeal a waste of time: "We're wasting time and resources with this appeal."
Lloyd had already quoted Silek's own Facebook post in which the attorney wrote: "I ask that others outside of typical Republican ranks also please consider supporting me. You do not have to be a registered Republican." That post, combined with the absence of any renunciation forms and the presence of known leftists at the polls, undercut Silek's Reagan analogy.
Not everyone at the Fisherville hearing favored overturning the election. Shenandoah County Sheriff Timothy Carter, who chairs his county's Republican committee, moved to have the appeal dropped. But the Sixth District committee ultimately sided with Lloyd and ordered a new election.
Rockbridge Area GOP Chairwoman Jan Lowry asked Silek during the hearing whether he would consider reversing the 102-member cap and whether both candidates would work together regardless of the outcome. Silek dodged the membership question and said he would have given Lloyd "a seat at the table" had Lloyd not filed the appeal.
"Yeah, I've heard that one too," Lowry replied.
The pattern here, insiders controlling process, gatekeeping participation, then claiming the mantle of unity after the fact, is not unique to Warren County. Courts and party bodies across the country have grappled with similar disputes. Just recently, the Supreme Court blocked a redistricting maneuver in New York that would have disadvantaged a Republican incumbent ahead of 2026.
The Sixth District's ruling means the February 12 results and the membership restructuring are void. A new mass meeting and election will be held. For the conservative activists who were locked out, turned away, or purged from the committee rolls, the ruling vindicates months of organizing and legal work.
The episode also raises uncomfortable questions about how local party machinery can be captured by a faction more interested in controlling access than in winning elections. When the people running the process are the same people allied with one candidate, and when the sheriff's husband is deciding who gets through the door, the process is not credible.
Concerns about election administration and official conduct have prompted federal investigations in other jurisdictions, though the Warren County matter was resolved through the party's own appeals process.
Warren County Republicans now get a do-over. The real test is whether the next meeting is run by people who answer to the grassroots, not to a faction that cuts the membership list in half and calls it growth.
