If he is not the youngest local political party chairman in the state, he must be right on the edge of it.

At 18 years of age, Daniel Bradshaw was elected chairman of the Prince Edward County Republican Committee, succeeding another youthful Republican, John Marsden, who at 18 was an alternate delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention from Virginia.

Bradshaw is a successful entrepreneur, running his own lawn care and landscaping business, Appomattox River Landscapes, since he was 12 years old.

After the Fifth Congressional District GOP Committee met in Nellysford (Nelson County) on August 22, Bradshaw talked with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about the challenges his committee faces as it approaches the November 2010 election.

Growing the Party
There are “a lot” of challenges, he said.

“We started out with a skeleton committee, so we’re working very hard to build that up. So far we’ve gotten a lot of people on board,” with just over 30 members now and “still growing.” In addition, the committee has “a large number of interested people on a non-member contact list,” who attend campaign events.

Among these “non-member contacts” are people who told Bradshaw “they didn’t want to be members but they would be willing to help work the polls [and] do some volunteer work, this November.” As a result of talking to people like that, he thinks the Prince Edward GOP will “have a pretty good force.”

He added optimistically: “We’re coming along really well.”

The issues that concern Prince Edward Republicans and voters in the county seem to be the same as those of other Virginians.

‘Shoved down their throats’
“There’s a whole lot” of identifiable issues, said Bradshaw, “a lot of stuff the President and Congress are shoving down their throats.”

He singled out health care as the “number one” concern of voters, but “jobs would be a very close second.”

Noting that many of the members of his committee are retired, Bradshaw has observed that “a lot of people are very concerned about the health care” legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama earlier this year.

He gave the example of one older lady on the Prince Edward GOP Committee, who told him:

“'I’m over 80 years old. If I needed a knee replacement in this new health care program, I probably wouldn’t get it [under] government-run health care.'”

In the area around Farmville and neighboring counties like Buckingham and Cumberland, Bradshaw pointed out, “we have a number of people who have had their hours drastically cut. My own dad works at a local sawmill; his hours were cut way back. A lot of people are rally suffering who haven’t actually lost their jobs but have been cut back.”

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