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In three state Senate districts, voters walked into voting booths Tuesday and chose a relatively moderate incumbent over a conservative, antitax, antiabortion, pro-gun challenger.
Were those voters sending a message to Republicans statewide, or were they simply reacting to factors in their own districts?
Political pundits say the success of Sens. John Chichester, Thomas Norment and Russ Potts sends a clear signal that rank-and-file Republicans don't want the party to stray too far to the right.
Party insiders, however, see it differently. They say the election results stemmed from goings-on in each individual district.
"I don't see it as being a strong philosophical message," said Gary Thomson, executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia. "You have three individuals with great ties to their community who worked hard, were challenged internally, which to me is a sign of a healthy party. I see it as a healthy thing that the party has the ability to challenge our own selves."
Del. Mark Cole, R-Spotsylvania, himself a member of the party's conservative wing and a former client of Mike Rothfeld, Chichester's opponent, agreed.
"I'm not sure that there's any message, other than the voters who showed up seemed to be satisfied with the status quo. The majority of them seem to be satisfied with the people who are representing them," Cole said. "These races tend to be more about the person, a lot of times, rather than a statewide race where you might be able to say there's a statewide mandate."
Cole pointed out that while moderates defeated conservatives in the three Republican Senate primaries, things went a different way in at least two Republican House primaries.
Del. Jack Rollison, R-Prince William, was defeated by a challenger whose message of low taxes echoed that of the challengers in the Senate primaries.
And Del. Tom Gear, R-Hampton, is a conservative who bested his more moderate challenger.
The message to the right wing was not that they can't win, Cole said; it was that they should do less tilting at windmills and look at districts they could win.
"Where we as conservatives should be focusing our efforts is open seats and open efforts, rather than wasting our efforts on challenging incumbents where you probably know you're going to lose before you even start," Cole said.
If the primaries sent any message, several Republicans said, it was that hard-hitting campaign tactics can backfire. In all three Senate primaries, the challengers were very aggressive in campaigning against the incumbents, slamming them on taxes, abortion and social issues.
"Voters were rejecting the negative campaigning. A lot of that backfired," said House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford.
"I think it definitely probably turned off people, it was probably more counterproductive than was its intended goals," Cole said. "It was probably more counterproductive than anything else. There's nothing wrong with discussing issues and highlighting differences between candidates. But I think people tend to get turned off if it gets too personal and too aggressive."
Thomson said such acrimonious primaries do make him nervous.
"I always hold my breath when they have campaigns like this, because obviously they were very aggressive campaigns," Thomson said. "I've always reminded people that at the end of the day we need to be fair, we need to be open, and at the end of the day we need to not doing anything we regret."
Still, pundits see a larger message.
"One of the big questions that the Republican Party has asked itself is how far to the right is too far to the right, and in many ways they may have gotten the answer last night," said Mary Washington College political analyst Stephen Farnsworth.
"Chichester didn't just win, he won big. The Norment race wasn't close either. And this endorsement was much more than a personal endorsement of an incumbent official. Senator Chichester's victory was much more than a personal endorsement of Senator Chichester, it was an endorsement of his style of politics.
"One might also note that he does not represent a left-leaning district. This is a Republican district that we're talking about. It's one of the more conservative districts in this region and yet there was a very strong endorsement for moderate politics."
The primary results have another beneficiary beyond the senators, Farnsworth said.
"Even though his name wasn't on the ballot, [Gov.] Mark Warner was one of the big winners on Tuesday night," he said. "The Republican Party in the Senate is going to keep a very moderate-Republican-dominated chamber. Warner would have had a much harder time with his agenda if the Republicans in the Senate looked like the Republicans in the House."
Warner himself described the outcome as, as others said, a rejection of negative campaigning.
"A number of the kind of sound-bite candidates that kind of had this 'rush to the bottom' approach of how we need to move Virginia forward were defeated," Warner told reporters yesterday.
Now that the primary elections are over, some Republicans will be getting ready to move forward with another battle: tax reform.
The next meeting of the newly revamped legislative commission that's studying ways to restructure the state's tax system is due to meet this summer; it was specifically scheduled for after the primaries, so that members such as Chichester could focus on their races.
Even Warner, who had previously said he would not announce his own tax reform plan until after the November elections, sounded willing to start talking about it sooner, saying he would lay out "broad principles" this summer.
"I'm not going to commit to a timetable today but I think you're going to see it before December," Warner said. "Any plan that we lay out will have more than sufficient time to be fully discussed, argued and vetted before final votes take place in March."
Howell, who has been prodding Warner to come out with a tax reform plan before the November elections, said he would welcome Warner's "broad principles."
"I'd love to see them, I'd love to see something," Howell said.