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The Commonwealth of Virginia infrequently produces women candidates for elective office. Since 1917, only three women have been elected (the first in 1992) to Congress, and Virginia typically falls in the bottom quintile for the number of women serving in the state legislature. This project examines the changing political climate of Virginia and why this party - competitive, swing state has not produced more opportunities for women to run for public office. Specifically, we examine the Republican Party of Virginia's candidate training program for women, the Jennifer Byler Institute, and the ways in which it serves as a pipeline for prospective Republican women candidates.

Although 2018 has been called another "Year of the Woman," increases in women's representation that year were party-specific. Historically, women's organizations fought to expand women's representation in both parties; however, the fruit of these efforts is currently concentrated among Democrats. Indeed, women contributed funds in record numbers in 2018, but the majority of women donors supported Democratic women candidates (Haley 2018), and liberal women's political action committees (PACs) played a prominent role in raising those funds.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump secured their respective party's 2016 nominations only after raucous, spirited debates among delegates at the start of each party convention. Groups and their preferred candidates behaved consistently with the policy demanders view of parties, which identifies parties as comprised of coalitions of groups with strong policy preferences that negotiate with one another for influence in the party decision-making and policy process. Using the 2016 Convention Delegate Study, the longest standing survey of Democratic and Republican Party activists, we examine intra-party groups as new delegates are folded into the framework along with returning delegates. We assess how the theory of parties as comprised of policy-demander groups works in a context of high external party polarization. The competition between these groups to recast their party in its preferred image in the absence of a standard party bearer for either party holds important implications for Democrats and Republicans in future presidential and congressional elections.