![]() This Readjuster-Republican ascendancy was as short-lived as it was improbable. Senate seat to Mahone, and, in 1884, formally adopted the name Republican Party of Virginia. Cameron) as governor, narrowly gained a majority in the Virginia legislature, awarded a U.S. They elected one of their own ( William E. For a brief time in the 1880s, a group that included influential ex-Confederates led by General William Mahone (hero of the Battle of the Crater), supporters of war-debt readjustment, western Republicans, and scattered elements of other factions forged a governing coalition. The issue of whether to repay fully or “ readjust” the state’s war debt loomed large in the political discourse. In the twenty-first century Republican candidates in Virginia routinely compete with their Democratic rivals for the support of nonaligned voters (generally called “independents”) in addition to mobilizing fellow partisans.Īfter the South’s military defeat and reconstruction, a period of shifting political alliances ensued in Virginia. ![]() Partisan fortunes ebbed and flowed, but neither party established durable majority support on a statewide basis. Following the mid-1970s, Virginia politics settled into a pattern characterized by active competition between the two major party organizations and their candidates. As the center-right party in a conservative-leaning state, the Virginia Republican Party became consistently competitive. After World War II (1939–1945), economic growth, demographic trends, electoral reforms, and policy debates combined to spur a realignment that gradually brought the Virginia parties into line philosophically with their national counterparts. ![]() During this period, the conservative Democratic Party dominated politics in Virginia and the rest of the South. Even then, for nearly a century the Republicans were an ineffectual, minority party with only pockets of regional strength. Although founded in 1854 in opposition to the spread of slavery, the party did not take hold in Virginia until after the American Civil War (1861–1865). The Republican Party is one of two major political parties in Virginia.
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