Still, Minor allowed Dance to make a brief campaign pitch to the few dozen people assembled around a conference table at the Capital Area Partnership building. Afterward, she deflected a few hostile questions about her perceived weakness in her support for Medicaid expansion and her collaborations with Republicans.

Minor accused Dance of stacking the nominating committee that set the rules for the primary and floating the ideas of having just three polling places and scheduling the primary in a way that would have only allowed one week for the campaign instead of two. He reiterated the fact that though he chaired the nominating committee, he recused himself from the formal vote due to his mother being a candidate.

“I have something which is called integrity,” Minor said. “I’m not going to sell my soul to the Republicans.”

“You, sir, have turned this process upside down,” Dance said after she demanded a chance to respond to Minor’s “punches and lies.”

Minor at first tried to keep the meeting moving by asking Democrat Ed Jewett about his campaign for clerk of Richmond Circuit Court, but others in the room urged him to let Dance respond.