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Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Until very recently, the much-watched off-year elections in Virginia were looking pretty bad for Republicans. Their gubernatorial candidate, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, has been struggling to compete financially and politically with Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a centrist congresswoman. Specific candidacies aside, Virginia has a long history of rejecting gubernatorial candidates from the party controlling the White House (which helped outgoing Republican governor Glenn Youngkin defeat Terry McAuliffe in 2021). Add in the Commonwealth’s recent blue-leaning tendencies and the terrible treatment its many federal employees have received from the second Trump administration, and you can understand why national Republicans have been more interested in the other big off-year gubernatorial contest in New Jersey.

But now the Virginia GOP may have caught a break via some oppo research on the Democratic candidate for attorney general by National Review:

On August 8, 2022, a Republican state legislator received a disturbing string of early-morning text messages from a former colleague, Jay Jones, this year’s Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general …

Jones, who at the time had recently resigned from the state house after a brief stint representing Norfolk, had strong feelings about how the political class was eulogizing recently deceased former state legislator Joe Johnson Jr., a moderate Democrat with a long tenure in Virginia politics …

“If those guys die before me,” Jones wrote, referencing the Republican colleagues who were publicly honoring the deceased Johnson’s memory, “I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves” to “send them out awash in something.”

Jones then suggested that, presented with a hypothetical situation in which he had only two bullets and was faced with the choice of murdering then-Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert or two dictators, he’d shoot Gilbert “every time.”

Apparently the texts were intended for a different recipient, but Jones’s words shouldn’t have been said to anybody about anybody. He reportedly compounded the offense in a follow-up phone call to the accidental recipient of the text suggesting that “he wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her own child die in her arms so that Gilbert might reconsider his political views.”

This was years ago, and Jones hasn’t displayed any offline violent tendencies, but as you can imagine, Republicans see a huge opportunity: not just to potentially defeat Jones (who was favored to win before all this controversy) but to divide and defeat the entire Democratic statewide ticket, as Axios explains:

Leading Virginia Democrats, including the statewide ticket, have condemned the comments Jones made in 2022 suggesting a hypothetical scenario in which he would shoot the then-Republican House speaker and wished harm on his children.

But none have called for Jones to step aside …

Gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears and lieutenant governor nominee John Reid are pressuring their opponents on social media to call on Jones to drop out.

Jones, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger and lieutenant governor nominee Ghazala Hashmi’s campaigns didn’t immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.

Unsurprisingly, those great advocates for civility in political discourse, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, have jumped into the fray with the latter quickly using the texts to defend himself and his boss for their own recent lapses in taste:

The Democrat candidate for AG in Virginia has been fantasizing about murdering his political opponents in private messages. I’m sure the people hyperventilating about sombrero memes will join me in calling for this very deranged person to drop out of the race. https://t.co/ZapsWc9VFG

— JD Vance (@JDVance) October 4, 2025

Conservative media is all over this story, and Jones’s abject apologies for the texts have cut no ice in those circles. He’s not the real target anyway; it’s Spanberger, and as Axios put it, “pushing Jones off the ticket could fracture Democrats’ chances in a pivotal statewide race seen as a bellwether for next year.” To be clear, in Virginia statewide candidates run independently, so there’s not really a “ticket” the gubernatorial nominee can control. For another, Jones is the sole Black statewide Democratic nominee, in a state where Democrats rely heavily on robust Black turnout.

I’m sure there’s back-channel talk about Jones “doing the right thing” and relieving his colleagues of his problems, along with pushback against the cynical manipulation of the “crisis” by Republicans. White House policy director Stephen Miller commented that Jones’s texts showed how “dangerously radicalized the Democrat Party has become.” But then Miller very clearly believes the “Democrat Party” should be outlawed, since, as he recently said, it is “an entity devoted exclusively [his emphasis] to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists.” Pleasing the likes of Miller would be galling for Virginia Democrats. Perhaps Jones and his party can tough it all out, but MAGA folk will incessantly use his example to buttress their absurd argument that the main source of violent political talk is left of center and will perhaps even pull off an electoral shocker in a time and place in which the Boss and his agenda aren’t very popular.

Republicans See an Upset in Violent Texts From Virginia Democrat

Republicans See an Upset in Violent Texts From Virginia Democrat