A chairman candidate for a local Republican committee outside Washington, D.C., is fighting to appeal an election after RINOs and Democrats staged a hostile takeover, installing their own leader and ousting actual conservatives from the group.
Former Warren County Republican Committee (WCRC) secretary Scott Lloyd lost the chairman race to local attorney David Silek during the group’s February 12 mass meeting that eyewitnesses said was riddled with disorganization, fraud, and blatant corruption from the start.
The faulty election featured contradicting ballot counts, many known Democrats and leftists ending up with ballots despite being turned away at first, and dozens of Republicans being blocked from entering the venue at the Front Royal Volunteer Fire Department, Breitbart News reported.
During the meeting, Warren County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Cheryl Cullers — who was technically supposed to be on a four-year ban from the WCRC due to her PAC’s endorsement of Democrats — announced that the committee would shrink its membership from 251 to 102. Some of the conservatives who were kicked off the committee with no notice were interviewed in Breitbart News’s previous article.
Witnesses said Warren County Sheriff Crystal Cline, an ally of Silek, handled the application forms of those trying to re-up or start their committee membership. Cline reluctantly confirmed that she was involved in this process when confronted at a county meeting hosted by Cullers on Sunday, though she claimed she was not in charge of organizing or running the meeting:
As seen in the video, both the Republican Sheriff, Crystal Cline, and Republican Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Cheryl Cullers refused to answer whether or not Democrats should vote in Republican committee elections.
The RINOs’ goal “appears to be to take out all of the Catholics,” a source involved in local Republican politics theorized, alleging that County Supervisor Hugh Henry once made a comment in a meeting that we had a “Catholic problem that needed resolving.”
In an appeal filed to the Virginia’s Sixth District Republican Committee on Thursday, Lloyd and dozens of other Warren County Republicans who signed his petition argued that the election held at the committee’s mass meeting violated multiple provisions of the Republican Party of Virginia’s (RPV) party plan.
“This appeal is not about personalities or factions,” the document states. “It is about the integrity of the Committee’s processes. If the Republican Party is to demand election integrity from others, it must enforce it within its own ranks.”
While only 25 signatures are required, over 70 people who attended the mass meeting signed Lloyd’s appeal, and several provided sworn affidavits attesting to glaring issues during the voting process.
According to the witnesses, ballots were doled out without verifying the names of recipients, several people who did not want to sign the required Republican attestation forms were allowed to vote, with Sheriff Cline promoting the idea that people didn’t have to be Republican voters to cast a ballot in the WCRC chair, and others were turned away from the door by her husband, George Cline. He admitted to turning away at least nine people in a Facebook comment, claiming that the building was at capacity.
Other witnesses said they observed at least 20 people being turned away, noting that approximately half of those prevented from entering were parishioners at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Front Royal.
An important layer to this case has to do with blatant anti-Catholic biases held by members of Silek’s camp, shown by County Supervisor Henry’s alleged comments and Sheriff Cline’s social media posts.
Lloyd is a devout Catholic father-of-nine.
Much of the bigotry coming from the left was triggered by some of Front Royal’s Christian and Catholic conservatives voicing their concerns over the local Samuels Public Library offering children’s books pushing transgenderism.
A self-proclaimed “progressive Democrat” op-ed writer who argued in favor of the LGBTQ+ kids’ books in the local paper last May defended Democrats who voted in the WCRC election in a Saturday piece after Lloyd filed his appeal.
“For the record, I did not attend the meeting and would not have voted if I had, because I would not have felt comfortable signing an attestation in support of the Republican Party,” Cara Eldridge Young wrote for the Royal Examiner. “However, I do not judge the motives of those Democrats who chose to participate, and I believe I understand why some of them did.”
Other affidavits, including one from Lloyd, pointed out that outgoing Chairman Tom McFadden, Jr. left early and was not present to open the mass meeting, arguing that was a violation of RPV bylaws.
Committee members also stated that they were turned away at the door after 7:00 p.m. without any notice that it would be the cutoff time, affidavits stated. The mass meeting was advertised as being from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., with registration beginning at 6:00 p.m., and no mention of people not being able to register to vote if they arrived after 7:00 p.m, as also seen with a poster Sheriff Cline shared on social media.
The appeal places the range of people denied entry to vote at nine to more than forty individuals, greater than the 19-point margin between Silek’s 225 votes to Lloyd’s 206.
The document also notes discrepancies between the number of eligible voters reported by the credentials committee, versus the number of eligible voters reported from the floor, versus the number of ballots actually cast.
In a new exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Lloyd said there were definitely Democrats that cast ballots to vote for Silek.
“Which, as a conservative, is unacceptable to me,” he said. “And I think it’s unacceptable to most people who call themselves Republicans, because otherwise, what is the point of having a party if just anybody is going to determine its direction?”
After Lloyd refused to concede the election to Silek, he started to build his case.
“This was not only a flawed process, this was a fatally flawed process where things that are a matter of black and white and in the rules didn’t happen.”
John Massoud, the chairman of the Sixth Congressional District Republican Committee, told Breitbart News that Lloyd’s appeal will be heard — but sources say it will not necessarily be an easy path.
While Lloyd’s camp wants the appeal to be heard by the executives of the district committee — the chairman, vice chairman, treasurer, secretary, and the northern, central, and southern regional chairs — insiders told Breitbart News that Massoud has directed the entire 33-member group to hear it next week after consulting with RPV attorney Chris Marston.
The district committee is to go over Lloyd’s appeal on Tuesday, March 31 at 7:00 p.m. in the town of Fisherville in Augusta County. Fisherville is about an hour and a half away from Warren County, and the meeting’s timing in the middle of the Holy Week right before Easter might make it difficult for enough members to show up, a source noted.
To reach quorum on Lloyd’s appeal hearing, at least one third of the Sixth Congressional District Republican Committee will have to be present, as opposed to just the executive committee. If a quorum is not reached, the case may have to be heard by the larger State Central Committee instead.
“We’re trying to figure out what’s best for the people of Warren County and what is best for the state as a whole,” Massoud told Breitbart News in a March 15 phone call. “This is a very serious issue, and we go from there.”
When asked about the WCRC mass meeting, Massoud acknowledged that it was a “hectic event” and confirmed that he was aware that “at least three” Democrats were present.
Lloyd’s appeal also faces foes on the Sixth District committee, including Silek himself, who holds a spot due to his newfound chairman power over the WCRC.
Stephen Kurtz, a former chairman of the WCRC and current vice chair under Silek, also sits on that committee. While he was acting as the head of the WCRC Credentials Committee on the night of the February 12 mass meeting, multiple witnesses said Kurtz threw away ballot records in the trash after counting was complete.
McFadden, the former WCRC chairman who left the meeting early, told Breitbart News that he only did so after getting permission from an RPV attorney at around 6:30 p.m. because he “wanted nothing to do with the fiasco that was about to take place.”
He told Silek before he left that he thought he was going to win the vote based on the crowd that showed up early — before the doors were scheduled to open for voters to come in. When he arrived at the venue at 5:30, McFadden said there were about 200 people already there who were “definitely” Silek voters.
“They were all ‘his’ people,” McFadden added, noting that “the Catholics” — mostly supporters of Lloyd — showed up after 6:00 p.m., when the doors were advertised as open.
Steve Heise, who sat on the WCRC Vetting Committee, recounted how he was turned away at the door of the fire department when he went to vote.
“Everybody was told that the meeting was starting at seven,” Heise told Breitbart News.
When he arrived sometime after 7:00 p.m., he was stopped at the door by George Cline, husband of Sheriff Crystal Cline.
“[George Cline] says that it’s all full, that the fire marshal has said that only 400 people can go in, and there’s 400 people in there. And so they closed the doors. Nobody can go in,” he recalled.
Heise said he asked Cline if he could go in and vote after some people cast their ballots and left, but he was told no.
“You’re not gonna be able to go in. They closed the meeting,” Cline said, according to Heise. “No one who is not upstairs now will be able to vote.”
Heise then left, and texted Kurtz notifying him that he was turned away at the door.
A screenshot provided by Heise shows that Kurtz, the head of the Credentials Committee for the mass meeting vote, read the message when it was delivered at 7:42 p.m., but Kurtz has never replied over a month later.
When asked about his previous interactions with the Clines, Heise said he thought he and George were “really good friends” and that Crystal “seemed pretty nice” when he had previously spoken to her about her political positions and beliefs.
As reported in Breitbart News’s previous coverage of the mass meeting, a woman accused the sheriff of pushing her when she was in the venue’s hallway, just as she was entering the door to the room to vote.
“The line was moving, and then all of a sudden we were stopped by the assistant chief of the fire and rescue and the Sheriff… the fire chief was in uniform, he had his blues on, and the sheriff was in civilian clothing,” the woman said. “Well, they stopped everybody in the hallway from entering into the room to register and vote and participate in the meeting. And when I asked the fire chief why they were not letting us in, he said because there was a capacity issue.”
She said she was eventually given verbal permission to enter the room by the assistant fire chief.
“I walked in between both of them, and then all of a sudden, I was forcibly pushed by the sheriff,” she said. “I wasn’t forewarned. You know, you would think that she would have said, ‘Please wait,’ or ‘Don’t go in,’ right?”
A complaint was later filed to the Virginia State Police.
After Breitbart News’s first article on the WCRC was published, George Cline tagged his wife’s alleged victim in a Facebook comment, calling her a liar and gloating over the RINO’s success in shrinking the size of the committee to 102 people.
Before the voting began at the mass meeting, Silek delivered a speech that went well over his allotted five minutes, while a crowd of people was standing out in the cold weather waiting to be let in to vote after the first group.
“The people outside wanted to get in. The people outside were cold,” Joyce Blankenship, an attendee of the mass meeting, told Breitbart News. “The people out there wanted to come in and vote while he was going on about himself. It was all about him, you know. And it’s pride — you know where pride comes from, right?”
She continued on to say that Silek “didn’t care about the people.”
“He cared about himself. He cared about his own power… you have to care about people if you’re going to represent them.”
Another meeting attendee told Breitbart News that Silek emulated a certain failed 2016 presidential candidate when he told the audience to “clap” at two different pauses during speech, dubbing him “Dollar Store Jeb Bush.”
At another point in his speech during the February 12 mass meeting, Silek boasted that his family’s roots in Front Royal “go back to the founding of the town” — an interesting thing to brag about considering his previous effort to disband the town, documented in 2010 by the Washington Post.
A new whistleblower involved with local politics who chose to speak with Breitbart News following the publication of the first article said the RINOs used the “Trojan horse” strategy to take over the WCRC.
“It’s the Republican establishment that’s riding a Trojan horse,” he said, explaining that they mobilized local Democrats to come to the mass meeting to help with their coup.
The whistleblower provided a meme that has been circulating amongst local Republicans who feel disenfranchised by the new WCRC, depicting RINOs taking over.
If the Sixth Congressional District Republican Committee reaches quorum next Tuesday, it will be up to them to listen to the petition signees’ request to toss the February mass meeting’s results and hold a new one.
“Each of these violations independently undermines the February 12 vote for Chairman,” the appeal packet states after listing the documented issues with the election. “Taken together, they establish that the meeting was conducted in material disregard of mandatory bylaws governing participation, presiding authority, voter qualification, and ballot control.”
The appeal continued; “Because the procedural safeguards designed to protect election integrity were not followed, the rights of qualified Republican voters were violated. The resulting vote is unreliable and invalid. Accordingly, the February 12, 2026 Mass Meeting vote for Chairman must be set aside.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
