In the 1957 Virginia gubernatorial election, incumbent Governor Thomas B. Stanley, a Democrat, was unable to seek re-election due to term limits. State Senator Theodore Roosevelt Dalton was again nominated by the Republican Party to run against former Democratic Attorney General J. Lindsay Almond.
As of 2025, this is the last occasion when Rockingham County or Shenandoah County voted Democratic for Governor.
Background
The preceding election had seen Dalton receive 45 percent of Virginia's limited electorate, which was the most any GOP nominee had garnered since 1885 when large numbers of subsequently disenfranchised blacks and poor whites remained enfranchised. This alongside the election of three Representatives in 1952 produced expectations of a continued GOP rise in Virginia. As early as 1950, sitting Attorney-General Lindsay Almond had helped eight black students led by Irving Linwood Peddrew III integrate Virginia Polytechnic Institute, which suggested that the state would be able to navigate the emerging Civil Rights movement reasonably well.
Brown v. Board of Education
Governor Stanley did not wish to defy the federal courts against 1954's landmark Brown v. Board of Education. but did urge black leaders to not press for compliance. However, a year of black pressure caused the white masses to protest demanding that integration be resisted much more vigorously, something Senator Byrd and his ruling machine had always urged. Polls carried out by the state's highest-circulation newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in 1956 showed that 92 percent of white Virginians supported segregation and only six percent opposed. A referendum in January 1956, in which turnout of registered voters was extremely low in the whitest parts of the state, voted 304 thousand to 144 thousand in favour of a constitutional convention with the explicit goal of maintaining segregated schools, and in August Stanley presented a package of legislation that mandated closing any public school under a Federal desegregation order, which passed the legislature under a tide of "segregationist emotionalism".
This severely divided and weakened the emerging Republican opposition to the Byrd Organization, and also progressive state Democrats. Virginia was one of seven states whose entire Congressional delegation had signed the "Southern Manifesto" in March.
General election
Campaign
Several members of the ruling Byrd Organization would contemplate running for Governor in the aftermath of the "Southern Manifesto", but by December it was clear that sitting Attorney General Almond would be the organization nominee. which under the extremely restricted Virginia electorate was tantamount to gaining the Democratic nomination, which Almond did by a four-to-one majority in the July primary. Unlike previous organization nominees, Almond had not been a favorite of Byrd especially given his past role in integrating Virginia Polytechnic, but sought the governorship for himself, in the process adopting Byrd's rigid segregationist views from the start of the campaign.
Dalton's 45 percent of the vote in 1953 remained viewed as extremely impressive, but he was reluctant before accepting the Republican nomination a second time.
School segregation was the solitary issue in the campaign, with Dalton proposing locally administered pupil assignment plans, emphasising the need to keep public schools open, and criticizing "Massive Resistance". Despite publicly expressing doubts about his campaign promises to prevent any integration whatsoever, Almond supported "Massive Resistance" and vigorously exploited the ongoing Little Rock Crisis to successfully argue that Dalton's policy would be certain to result in large-scale integration. When Almond improved upon Stanley's 1953 margin by sixteen percentage points, Senator Byrd, alongside the governor-elect, said that the election was a mandate
to defend and preserve the inherent powers of Virginia's sovereign statehood.
Candidates
- J. Lindsay Almond, former Attorney General (Democratic)
- Theodore Roosevelt Dalton, State Senator from Radford (Republican)
- C. Gilmer Brooks, automobile salesman (Independent)
Results
Results by county or independent city
Counties and independent cities that flipped from Democratic to Republican
Counties and independent cities that flipped from Republican to Democratic
- Alleghany
- Botetourt
- Giles
- Henrico
- James City
- Lee
- Roanoke
- Shenadoah
- Stafford
- Warwick
- Covington (independent city)
- Fredericksburg (independent city)
- Norfolk (independent city)
- Roanoke (independent city)
- Staunton (independent city)
- Warwick (independent city)
- Waynesboro (independent city)