The Virginia Republican politician who shook up multiple statewide elections by disclosing text messages in which a prominent Democratic candidate fantasized about a rival receiving “two bullets to the head” has conceded defeat in her own bid to retain office.
Carrie Coyner was seeking a third two-year term in Virginia’s house of delegates when she publicly shared the text messages that she had previously received from Jay Jones, a former Democratic colleague who ran in the state’s attorney general election on Tuesday.
Some projected that the controversy that erupted surrounding the texts would derail Jones’s campaign while also complicating his fellow Democrat Abigail Spanberger’s run for Virginia governor.
But Spanberger and Jones won the Republican-held offices that they targeted while Coyner lost to Democratic challenger Lindsey Dougherty by a margin of 52.5% to 47.3%, according to voting returns.
The district from which Coyner was ousted was considered competitive. It broke in favor of Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election that the then Democratic vice-president lost to her Republican counterpart, Donald Trump.
Coyner’s loss also unfolded as the president registered low public approval ratings, and his party endured a number of decisive defeats on Tuesday in elections across the US.
She issued a concession statement on social media after her defeat saying she would spend “much-needed time” with her family and refocus on her law practice. Calling it “the greatest honor” to have served in Virginia’s legislature and previously on a local school board, the statement added: “I know God’s got new plans for me – and I can’t wait to see what’s ahead.”
The text messages that rocked Jones’s campaign were sent by him to Coyner in 2022 while they coincided in the Virginia state house of delegates. In them, Jones speculated on what he would do if he had a pair of bullets and was faced with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, Cambodian authoritarian Pol Pot and the then Republican house of delegates speaker Todd Gilbert.
“Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” Jones wrote, as first reported by the National Review. “Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time.”
In a subsequent text to Coyner, Jones said Gilbert and his wife, Jennifer, were “evil” and “breeding little fascists”.
The texts show Coyner responding: “Jay. Please stop.” After disclosing the texts in October, she issued a statement arguing that “what [Jones] said was not just disturbing but disqualifying for anyone who wants to seek public office.
“It’s disgusting and unbecoming of any public official.”
Jones published a statement in which he said his texts left him “embarrassed, ashamed and sorry”.
“I cannot take back what I said,” Jones’s statement said. “I can only take full accountability and offer my sincere apology.”
Nonetheless, Republicans – including Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance – seized on them. Trump dismissed Jones as “a radical left lunatic”, and Spanberger’s opponent – the lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears – sought to associate her with the texts while demanding that she drop out.
Spanberger condemned Jones’s texts but said voters should determine his candidacy’s fate.
Republicans were particularly irked by Jones’s victory on Tuesday, including Congress member Brandon Gill of Texas, who argued that the outcome of the Virginia attorney general’s race amid the US’s ongoing dialogue of political violence was “truly demonic”.
Others, though, experienced schadenfreude over Coyner’s loss and the hand she had in throttling Jones’s campaign. For instance, one social media user posted an image of former Democratic president Joe Biden raising his arms theatrically along with the words: “Carrie Coyner is dead and Jay Jones is alive!”
Political violence has become a recurring topic in the US’s public discourse in part after Trump survived two assassination attempts while running for a second presidency in 2024.
Other such cases were the firebombing in April of the home of the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro; the murders in June of the former Minnesota state house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark; and the shooting death in September of staunch Trump ally Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA.
Jones late on Thursday invited another round of national media attention by announcing that he had named Ralph Northam – Virginia’s Democratic governor from 2018 to 2022 – to lead his transition team. In 2019, Northam resisted widespread calls to resign when a racist picture in his 1984 medical school yearbook page resurfaced depicting someone in blackface next to another person in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe.
Northam apologized but denied being in the photo, though he acknowledged wearing blackface decades earlier to look like Michael Jackson for a dance contest.
• This article was amended on 7 November 2025. Members of Virginia’s house of delegates serve two-year terms, not four.
