Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

We all know that it was the elections in November 1999 when state Republicans - finally - finished their long, arduous journey toward majority party status.

Vance Wilkins, then the minority leader in the House of Delegates, had achieved his dream of more than 20 years to see Republicans take a majority of the seats in that historic chamber. After successfully leading that charge, he would go on two months later in January to be elected the first Republican house speaker in more than a century. It also was in that November election that an outright Republican majority was achieved in the state senate.

Jim Gilmore, a Republican, was governor. He'd flexed his muscle to raise and spend millions on key house and senate races. It was, at least in part, his money on top of Wilkins' years of working in the vineyards recruiting credible candidates - and also raising tons of money himself - that combined to bring different, fresher air in the state capitol.

Thinking back, though, we can trace the beginnings of the GOP's ascendancy to the early '90s and to Hampton Roads. That's when and where, it seems, that state Republicans first began to take off in an undeniable way.

And what more ironic place than Hampton Roads?

You see, Tidewater - specifically, Norfolk - had for decades been a Democratic stronghold. Tom Moss, a center-left pol who'd go on to serve as house majority leader and eventually speaker, was elected in 1966 after running against the fabled - and very conservative - Byrd Machine. He stayed in the house until 2001, leaving after two thumb-twiddling sessions as a minority party member. Norfolk also had sent Stanley Walker to Richmond for some 30 years. Walker had gone from the Norfolk School Board, where he'd made something of a name for himself in the tumultuous early '60s to the House for eight years and then to the state Senate until his defeat by a Republican in 1999. When he left, humbled, he was the Senate's senior member.

We also saw such powerbrokers from the waterlogged end of the state as Alan Diamonstein, who was elected to the house in 1968 and spent his entire career there, leaving it, like his friend Moss, in 2001, having also endured more of life in the minority party than he could stand. Diamonstein made a half-hearted attempt that same year to capture the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor. He failed, and his light finally flickered out.

Moss and Walker and Diamonstein and a few others like them relished in bringing the bacon home to Hampton Roads. They'd been doing so for as long as many could remember. They were Democrats, and they ruled. In 1991, in the whole Tidewater area - Newport News, Hampton, Portsmouth, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Isle of Wight, Suffolk, and Virginia Beach - there were only four Republicans in the house and one in the senate. As a group, they just could put together a good poker game.

The small band of Hampton Roads delegates included Randy Forbes in Chesapeake, Phil Hamilton in Newport News, and Bob Purkey and Bob Tata in Virginia Beach. Tata was the first Republican of the bunch to be elected; he first went to Richmond in 1984. The very lonely senator was a fellow from Chesapeake, Mark Earley, who, despite being a pretty solid conservative, had first taken his seat in 1988 by somehow appealing to both big labor and the local NAACP.

That was Tidewater's total Republican delegation to the General Assembly in 1991. Five in all. In 1992, the world was a lot different.

The November 1991 elections brought a tidal wave of Republican victories in Hampton Roads. Wilkins, who was not even minority leader at the time, had taken upon himself the role of chief Republican recruiter in the house. He spent every awake minute in late '90 and early '91 thinking about getting the best candidates possible. Then, in the spring, summer, and fall of '91, he spent every minute hounding them on the campaign trail. He was the coach - and his team of hearty candidates did the necessary work that year to win significant victories.

When the polls closed and the votes were tallied, the tattered Hampton Roads band of four GOP house members had doubled. An unprecedented eight Republicans from that region would take the oath in January. Robert Nelms had run a good race in Suffolk to beat Sam Glasscock, who'd been in the house since 1970. In Virginia Beach, Bob McDonnell beat Glenn McClanan, also a delegate for some 20 years. And the ex-Navy duo of Frank Wagner and Leo Wardrup appealed to a stars-and-stripes Virginia Beach constituency to round out the impressive Republican House wins.

In the Senate, Earley was no longer the only Tidewater Republican. Three more won that November and would be inaugurated with him in Richmond two months later. Ken Stolle knocked off Moody Stallings for a Virginia Beach senate seat, which was considered an upset. Tommy Norment stunned Bill Fears, who'd served since 1968. And Fred Quayle beat Johnny Joannou in Portsmouth.

So the five Tidewater Republican delegates and senators were now 12. These victories, combined with a few other GOP gains in southwest, central, and northern Virginia signaled that a new day had dawned in state politics.

But, clearly, it was the Hampton Roads wins - right in the backyards of leading Democratic powerbrokers - that everybody was talking about.

And what a noteworthy bunch of Hampton Roads victories it was, when you stop and think about it. Among the four new Republican delegates from the region winning in '91, two would rather quickly rise to positions of leadership. Wardrup would become within a few years chairman of the House Republican Caucus - he still is today - and McDonnell quickly established himself as a top-flight floor debater and policy wonk, especially on criminal justice and welfare issues. McDonnell is now assistant majority leader and is favored to be the next Republican nominee for attorney general.

Likewise, good things would quickly come to the invigorated Hampton Roads senate Republicans. Earley, who'd sat for four years as the only Tidewater Republican before being joined by the others, would go on to become attorney general in 1997 and run for governor four years later. Stolle also would run for the GOP nomination for attorney general, and while unsuccessful in his bid, today his is a pretty strong voice in the senate and he now heads the State Crime Commission, ironically a body that Walker, the old Norfolk Democrat, had started decades before. Norment also sits in a leadership position as Republican floor leader.

So, yes, it's easy to think back just a few years ago to election night in 1999, when on the stage at the Richmond Marriott we saw Gilmore and Wilkins and others raising their hands together in victory. It was then that they were for the first time calling themselves the majority party. It was exciting, and the daunting task of governing probably had not settled upon them.

It's also too easy to remember only the coach and his quarterback when thinking back on the championship game. It's more difficult to recall with clarity the blood, sweat, and tears that so many grunts spilled along the way, season after season.

But it's always important that we do so. It's important that we remember the early years - the building years - and properly credit those who kicked it all into high gear.

In modern Virginia politics, if we think about it, we'll probably agree that it was a bunch of Republican candidates in Hampton Roads - all in one significant election year, 1991 - who sparked a conservative roll that would culminate in less than a decade in a new era. A new Republican era.

Your thoughts?

The Bryant Archive

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It'll be Goode in the Fifth

The Wilder gamble

The politics of water

On Labor Day, coal miners and being a Republican

Shadow responsibilities

A time for all Virginians to pull together

The people versus the powerful in Northern Virginia

A media double standard?

Warner's California Ways

Bill Howell: the Un-Wesson