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By GEORGE BOWLES
This year’s state Republican convention in Norfolk did considerably more than nominate a solidly conservative slate of GOP candidates for the party’s statewide races. It may also be seen as a surprisingly strong reassertion of the clout of two components of Virginia’s body politic whose combined influence in recent years has been the key to Republican success at the polls.
One of these is the army of one-time Byrd Democrats whose exodus to the GOP was led, a decade ago, by former Gov. Mills E. Godwin Jr. and other Democratic conservatives. The other is the state’s fabled Independent Conservative Coalition, sometimes called the “Main Street Money Boys.”
The latter -group, informally, led by former Del. Roy Smith of Petersburg and:Richmond financier Smith Ferebee, is also made up of former Byrdmen. The coalitionists, however, prefer to retain their independent status in order to be free to support the most conservative candidate available, regardless of the candidate’s party affiliation.
Their growing influence in the GOP has come at the expense of the traditionally moderate Virginia Republicans who, for half a century, bitterly fought these same Byrd Democrats and all their works.
The convention nominated former Fairfax Del. Wyatt B. Durrette, now of Chesterfield County, for governor, state Sen. John H. Chichester of Stafford for lieutenant, governor and Del. W. R. “Buster” O’Brien of Virginia Beach for attorney general.
Durrette was unopposed for the gubernatorial nomination and O’Brien handily won the attorney general’s nod, although his virtually unknown opponent, Winston Mathews of Charles
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