The fallout from revelations that the Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general sent text messages using violent language threatening a political opponent and his family continue to reverberate a week after they were first brought to light.
During a chaotic gubernatorial debate Thursday, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican nominee in this fall’s election, again called on the Democratic nominee, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, to tell Democrat Jay Jones to drop out of the race for attorney general.
Earle-Sears repeatedly interrupted Spanberger, the current front-runner in the race, who mostly did not engage directly with her opponent and often stared straight ahead and remained silent when faced with questions from the Republican. The meeting was the only scheduled debate between the two candidates ahead of the Nov. 4 election to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
“But really, what I want to ask this first question is, Abigail, when are you going to take Jay Jones and say to him, ‘You must leave the race’?” Earle-Sears said early in the debate when asked about the state’s unpopular car tax.
Asked by the debate moderators if she was aware of Jones’ text messages and whether she would continue to endorse him, Spanberger neither affirmed nor pulled back her support.
“The comments that Jay Jones made are absolutely abhorrent,” Spanberger said.
“The voters now have this information, information that was withheld from them, presumably for political reasons,” she added. “It is up to voters to make an individual choice based on this information.”
The National Review reported last week that in 2022, Jones, then a member of the commonwealth’s House of Delegates, sent text messages to a Republican colleague as delegates were mourning the death of a Democratic state lawmaker. In the messages, Jones contemplated a hypothetical scenario under which he would use a gun to give then-Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert “two bullets to the head.” He also mused about the hypothetical deaths of Gilbert’s children.
The disclosures come amid a nationwide reckoning with political violence since the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a college campus in Utah last month and the shooting deaths of Minnesota House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home in June.
While Democrats have condemned Jones’ remarks, few have called on him to drop out of the race, with early voting already underway and commonwealth law not permitting a candidate to be replaced on the ballot this late in the campaign. Democrats have also accused Republicans of selective outrage, citing heated rhetoric used by President Donald Trump and others in the party.
But the controversy has given Republicans an opening late in the Virginia elections, which polls showed had been leaning Democrats’ way. A Sept. 25-29 Washington Post-Schar School survey, for example, gave Spanberger a double-digit lead over Earle-Sears, while Jones and Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Ghazala Hashmi held narrower leads over their Republican opponents.
On Thursday, the Republican Attorneys General Association released a poll that found GOP incumbent Jason Miyares at 46 percent and Jones at 44 percent. The survey was conducted between Monday and Tuesday of this week.
Miyares’ campaign launched a $1.5 million ad buy in response to the texting scandal. Earle-Sears has also run spots seeking to tie Spanberger to Jones, including launching a $1 million ad campaign ahead of Thursday’s debate.
Also Thursday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released a digital ad narrating the texts that Jones sent and criticizing Democrats for not dropping their support for him. The ad didn’t directly mention Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, who is up for reelection next year and has called Jones’ comments “appalling, unacceptable, and inconsistent with the person I’ve known.” Still, Republicans have slammed Warner and fellow Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine for not dropping their support for the embattled nominee.
Four of the five Republicans in Virginia’s 11-member House delegation issued a joint statement this week calling on Jones to drop out of the race.
“The newly reported violent and threatening comments made by Jay Jones are reprehensible and should disqualify him from the race for Attorney General in Virginia,” Reps. Rob Wittman, Jen Kiggans, John McGuire and Ben Cline said Wednesday. “Political violence and threats have no place in our democracy, and all leaders must be held to the highest standards.”
Rep. Morgan Griffith, the lone Virginia Republican who did not sign on to the statement, called Jones’ comments “disturbing” but told Cardinal News that “as a Republican officeholder, I have long held to the belief that it is not my place to tell the Democratic Party what candidates they should nominate or ask to step aside.”
At Thursday’s debate, Spanberger sought to go on offense against Earle-Sears over abortion and gay rights. An ad released by the Spanberger campaign just before the debate highlighted the Republicans’ opposition to abortion rights. The Democrat’s campaign has also sought to capitalize on Earle-Sears saying onstage, “That’s not discrimination” when Spanberger accused her of opposing same-sex marriage and supporting an employer’s right to fire someone for being gay.
“No company wants to grow in a state where the Governor excuses discrimination and supports firing workers because of who they are. Her comments tell businesses and families that Virginia is closed to the talent, investment, and innovation that keeps our economy strong,” Spanberger said in a Friday statement.
The ongoing government shutdown has also become a factor in the race. Senators in Washington have been unable to come to an agreement to reopen the government, with most Democrats blocking multiple efforts to take up a House-passed stopgap funding bill while GOP senators have blocked taking up a Democratic alternative that would also address health care policy.
Earle-Sears on Thursday accused Democrats and her opponent of “playing political football.”
“When are you going to publicly say to Sens. Kaine and Warner, ‘Go and do your job and keep federal workers working’? That’s the way you stop the shutdown,” she told Spanberger.
Spanberger said she would encourage “everyone,” Virginia Democrats and Republicans alike, to come together to help negotiate a way out of the shutdown, while she also pointed fingers at the White House and her opponent over cuts to the federal workforce that have disproportionately hit the commonwealth.
After news broke Friday that the Trump administration would begin further layoffs at government departments and agencies, Spanberger again criticized Earle-Sears for not standing up for federal workers.
“Virginians saw with their own eyes that Winsome Earle-Sears’ loyalty to Donald Trump will always come first, no matter the cost to Virginians and their families,” the Democrat said in a statement. “That’s not leadership — that’s betraying the people of Virginia who she was elected to serve.”
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