Rick Buchanan didn’t expect to walk out before the first session even ended.

The chair of the 5th Congressional District GOP Committee had arrived at the Donald W. Huffman Advance — the Republican Party of Virginia’s annual flagship gathering — at The Forum Hotel in Charlottesville on Dec. 6, 2024, hoping the event would offer a clear roadmap heading into a pivotal election year.

Instead, he said, he witnessed what felt like an early coronation of Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who had launched her gubernatorial bid that September and, in his view, had already been handpicked by Gov. Glenn Youngkin as his successor.

“I sat there and watched it,” Buchanan said. “I had breakfast, and then went to the first real gathering of the troops, at lunch, and that’s when the coronation began. And I

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