Audit dispute triggers bitter feud between Va. Beach Republicans and district leaders

by Markus Schmidt, Virginia Mercury
May 7, 2025

What started as a call for financial transparency has exploded into bitter infighting within the Republican Party of Virginia Beach, pitting local GOP chair Laura Hughes and her conservative grassroots allies against the leadership of the 2nd Congressional District GOP Committee — and, by extension, the party’s entrenched establishment wing. 

With accusations of stonewalling, sabotage, and political retribution flying, the dispute has deepened long-standing tensions and raised concerns about how party unity will hold heading into key statewide elections in November.

The conflict will come to a head this Wednesday, when members of the 2nd District GOP committee will hold a closed executive session in Chesapeake to vote on whether to remove Hughes from her post — a move her allies say is an anti-democratic power grab by establishment figures.

Hughes, an attorney and former Virginia Beach school board member, was elected local GOP chair in March 2024 at a packed mass meeting of about 1,100 Republicans. Her victory by 95 votes surprised many — including longtime power players — and marked a shift toward grassroots-driven leadership. But with that shift came deepening fractures.

“When I took office, I thought the hardest part would be rallying people and getting them excited to grow the party,” Hughes told The Mercury in an interview Monday. “I didn’t realize the biggest fight would come from inside.”

One of her first priorities was to push for a formal audit of the local committee’s finances, which she quickly learned had not been conducted since 2014 — despite the party’s bylaws requiring annual reviews. 

“When I couldn’t get access to basic financial documents, I decided to ask for an audit,” she said. “It seemed irresponsible not to.”

That decision, Hughes said, opened a hornet’s nest. 

The committee’s former treasurer, she alleged, refused to provide documents or grant her access to records. Eventually, the state party stepped in to perform what was termed a “financial review” — though not a formal audit — and Hughes said that when the report was finished, she was only allowed to view it after signing a non-disclosure agreement.

“I think the whole body of the party should be allowed to have it,” Hughes said. “There were a lot of procedural issues that have been going on for years and years and years.”

In a detailed Facebook post last week, Hughes accused prior local leadership and 2nd District Chair Dennis Free of blocking accountability efforts at every turn. She wrote that after engaging the state party, the audit was “taken out of our committee’s hands and handed to people at the state level,” ultimately becoming “just a report, not an audit.” 

Free did not respond to phone calls and text messages seeking comment. 

A push for transparency 

Hughes told members she was required to sign a nondisclosure agreement just to see the report and described the process as an alarming lack of transparency. 

“The members should be able to see the report and have their questions answered,” she wrote, warning that instead of letting the report speak for itself, Free had called for her removal “without a single vote from the members who built this committee back from dysfunction.”

Karen Heesch-Gilman, who took over as the local committee’s treasurer under Hughes, reinforced those concerns in an email obtained by The Mercury, describing how Hughes had struggled to access  basic materials such as old bank statements, QuickBooks records, or deposit slips. 

“Laura had no choice but to purchase bank statements at a cost of $150,” Heesch-Gilman wrote.

Even after the state party review, Hughes said, the missing records were only handed over — sealed in a box — shortly before Free announced the meeting to decide her fate.

Heesch-Gilman underscored that many of the financial problems dated back years and were not the fault of the current leadership.

“Most of the audit report details issues inherited and are correctable,” she wrote. “Nothing places blame or indicates incompetency of the current executive board.”

Free, the chair of the 2nd District GOP committee, defended the upcoming vote at a Republican breakfast event last Saturday, telling the crowd that the meeting’s sole purpose was to determine whether Hughes had “failed to function” in her role.

“I heard a lot about Chairwoman Hughes and that she had to sign an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement, to see the audit. That’s not correct,” Free said in a video of the event obtained by The Mercury. 

“The information is confidential because it can only be shared among party members. It is wrong and unethical for a party member to take confidential information and share it with a non-party member.” He warned that mishandling confidential materials would amount to “an ethical kind of violence,” punishable by censure or removal.

But Hughes’ backers argue that the move is a blatant overreach. 

“It should be with us, not in the 2nd District committee,” Virginia Beach GOP Vice Chair Paula Chang said to applause at the breakfast. Chang said Free had bypassed the local committee that initiated the financial review in the first place.

Virginia Beach Republicans fight back

Jim Cohen, a longtime Virginia Beach Republican, pointed to Bruce Meyer — vice chair of the 2nd District GOP committee and a key player in the push against Hughes — as a driving force behind the turmoil. 

Cohen said Meyer has long operated behind the scenes, shaping party outcomes and influencing Free. 

“It’s been happening for years and years,” Cohen said. “You’ve got factional fighting, you’ve got various groups with various interests. You’ve got people who, in politics, they want sex, money, or power, and in this case, it’s all about power. It’s all about who has their hands on the wheel and who they don’t want to have hands on the wheel.”

Meyer said in a text message that he is “very aware of the many issues concerning Laura Hughes,” but added he would hold off on further comment until he has reviewed the RPV’s audit report on Wednesday. 

“For the record, I have always recognized Laura as the chair of the RPVB and still do,” Meyer noted. “In fact, I introduce her every Saturday, at our weekly breakfast, so she can give her report about the Republican Party of Virginia Beach.”

Cohen said the dynamic is nothing new, describing “years and years of pattern” where Meyer has attacked anyone who didn’t give him power or whom he hadn’t backed in a prior election. 

“Every meeting we have, Bruce Meyer will stand up and try to come up with anything he can to call, to try to get the room to turn against her,” Cohen said, speaking about Hughes. While he acknowledged that infighting happens in both Democratic and Republican parties, Cohen emphasized that the real issue arises “when you weaponize rules that we all agree to play by in order to take action against an individual.”

Adding to the chorus of criticism is Jimmy Frost, a Virginia Beach Republican for 16 years who ran unsuccessfully for local chair in 2020 and has long positioned himself as part of the party’s conservative, anti-establishment wing. Frost called the effort against Hughes “basically a political hit job.”

“From the moment Laura was elected, these folks in, I guess you can call it the establishment wing of the party as represented by Dennis Free, just cannot conceive of the reality where they’re not in charge,” Frost said. 

“And they have been attempting to undermine Laura at every turn, even from the first meeting when they tried to put forth an alternate board of directors that included many of the same people who were running the party under (former local chair) Bill Curtis.”

Frost said the pattern is familiar. When he ran for local party chairman five years ago, he faced multiple attempts by insiders to force him out. “I had no less than five different attempts made to either convince me, intimidate me, or basically try to buy me out of running,” he said.

Reflecting on the stakes of the latest intra-party showdown, Frost said the problem runs deeper than one leadership dispute. 

“If you take a position that is anywhere opposed to or different from what the establishment of the party thinks is the way to go, these people will try to destroy you personally, publicly, professionally, and permanently,” he warned.

And looking ahead to Wednesday’s high-stakes meeting, Frost said bluntly: “I think Dennis is going to railroad Laura. But we are going to be there for her.”

Mark Peake, the chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, said he  doesn’t know Hughes well and has only had limited interaction with her, noting, “I think I’ve spoken to her twice.” 

Still, in a phone interview Tuesday Peake made clear he is not enthusiastic about the escalating battle inside the 2nd District. 

“In my tenure as RPV chairman, the last thing I want to have happen are intra-party fights,” he said. “I don’t think it is good for the party to try and remove people that have been elected unless there’s a crime, or unless there’s something that would be very offensive and detrimental to Republicans.”

While Peake acknowledged that the district committee does have the authority to remove a local chair, he voiced concern about the potential fallout. “They can do that, or otherwise they wouldn’t be having that meeting,” he said, adding that he was not fully informed on the specific issues driving the conflict.

What worries Peake more, he said, is the larger picture. 

“We’ve got statewide elections in November. Democrats already got the Senate, they’ve got the House. If they win the governorship, the 200 bills that Governor (Glenn) Youngkin vetoed this year are going to get signed,” Peake warned. 

“We can’t risk that happening. So I want all Republicans’ attention to be focused on beating the Democrats in November, and that’s always what we should be focused on, unless something like I previously discussed has happened, and that has not happened in Virginia Beach.”

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