State Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, is resigning from the Bedford County Republican Committee in order to support the independent candidacy of Del. Lacey Putney.
Because of a Republican Party rule, any committee member who supports a non-Republican candidate must be removed from the committee, Newman said.
The rule hasn’t presented a problem in previous years for Newman or other Republicans who regularly support Putney, but this year a GOP candidate, Jerry Johnson of Buchanan, is running against Putney.
Democrat Lewis Medlin of Montvale also is on the ballot against Putney, who is completing his 50th year in the House of Delegates and caucuses with its Republican members.
Newman said in a two-page letter to the Bedford Republican Committee and its chairman, Nate Boyer, that he was resigning in order to prevent the committee from having to vote him out. Newman said he hopes to rejoin the committee after the Nov. 8 election, if the membership votes him back in.
“I would rather do the right thing and resign my membership out of an understanding and respect for the rule,” Newman wrote.
The rule, contained in the statewide Republican Party Plan, caused several of Virginia’s top Republican officials to be removed from their local committees this fall.
That includes the likes of U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-7th District, and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and Del. William Howell, speaker of the House of Delegates.
Every Republican who endorsed Del. Bill Janis, a Republican who turned independent so he could run for commonwealth’s attorney in Henrico County, is out of his or her local GOP committee.
Janis decided to run against Matthew Geary, Henrico’s Republican incumbent prosecutor whom party leaders abandoned after he admitted to an extramarital affair.
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