John N. Dalton, the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, was nominated by the Republican Party to run against the Democratic nominee, former Lieutenant Governor of Virginia Henry Howell.

[2] This was the only instance in Virginia's history in which the Republican Party won the gubernatorial election for a third time consecutively.

Henry Howell, who was elected lieutenant governor in 1971 and unsuccessful ran for governor in 1973, was an opponent of the Byrd machine and one of the most liberal politicians in Virginia at the time.

[3] Attorney General Andrew P. Miller was the highest elected Democratic official in the state.

[5] Governor Mills Godwin, a former Democrat, was supported by the Byrd machine, but John N. Dalton was a lifelong Republican and his father, Theodore Roosevelt Dalton, ran as the Republican nominee against a Byrd-backed Democrat in the 1953 gubernatorial election.