Rattled Virginia Dems Hope Early Voting, Debate Can Save Jay Jones

On Friday afternoon, Virginia Democrats were furious.

National Review had just revealed that, in 2022, Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones sent text messages to a former state legislative colleague in which he fantasized about shooting then-speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates Todd Gilbert.

The immediate sense among Jones’s team was that the damning story would blow over, in part because they thought mainstream journalists would be hesitant to pick up a story first reported by a conservative outlet, according to a source familiar with the campaign’s thinking.

“They were, like, he’s saying that this is an intentional attack, and that this was planned, and that this is personal,” one Democratic strategist told National Review, describing conversations with members of the Jones campaign. Even more troubling for Democrats was Jones’s failure to immediately explain to his supporters and donors “what he was going to do to rectify this,” the strategist said.

The Jones campaign did its best to dodge the story entirely, declining to respond to a request for comment that was sent by National Review hours ahead of publication. After the story was published, rather than provide a statement to the outlet that broke the story, the campaign decided to speak with a local outlet , the Virginia Scope.

The belated statement did not include an apology — nowhere in it did the word “sorry” appear — and instead accused National Review of doing Trump’s bidding. Jones didn’t issue a formal apology until shortly before 8 p.m. on Friday.

Then came the talking points. After the story broke, Democratic operatives were told to deflect questions about the texting scandal by talking about President Donald Trump.

“I was told that the best way to message this issue was to take issue with the unified calls of Republicans asking him to step down, and to point out that nobody from their party asked Trump to resign on Day One after he pardoned the January 6 folks,” said the Democratic strategist. “And I was just, like, ‘I'm not pulling the January 6 card in this.’”

The Jones campaign’s request that allies deflect questions about the text messages by referring to Trump seems to be catching on in some quarters: Virginia’s Democratic speaker of the House, Don Scott, posted a video montage on Wednesday featuring various clips of Trump using inflammatory rhetoric.

Donors Livid as Jones Brazens It Out

Donors and endorsing organizations were furious and mortified by the scandal and by Jones’s failure to immediately take responsibility. After the story broke, many Democrats who had fundraised or contributed large checks to the Jones campaign were inundated with questions from friends about whether they knew about the candidate’s skeletons when they agreed to help his campaign, a source familiar with those conversations told National Review.

Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group that contributed $200,000 to Jones’s campaign, scrubbed its endorsement of Jones from its website while declining to make a public statement on the scandal, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

As of Friday evening, the Jones campaign was telling people that the candidate had no plans to drop out or cancel his upcoming debate with incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares on October 16, sources familiar with the matter tell National Review.

“He's not going to drop out of the race,” a former Democratic state legislator who served in the Virginia House tells National Review. “He’s simply going to weather the storm and thinks that he’s got a fighting chance.”

“He intends just to soldier on. And I think the collective sentiment is that they're disappointed, but nobody is willing to go out on a limb and say anything other than that. They're disappointed, he needs to take ownership, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

That could change. The list of October surprises is starting to pile up, and it’s notable that the Jones campaign has already begun canceling interviews, fundraisers, and meet and greets this week following the text message scandal.

The Jones campaign did not respond to National Review’s request for comment.

Virginia Democrats are largely adopting a condemn-and-move-on strategy, whereby they criticize Jones’s 2022 rhetoric while stopping short of asking him to withdraw. That’s likely in part because early voting began on September 19, meaning thousands of Virginians have already cast their ballots, and rallying behind a new candidate in the event he withdraws would effectively cede the race to incumbent Republican Attorney General Miyares. And yet it’s entirely possible that the political fallout from the texting scandal is too much for Jones or the Democratic ticket to bear.

As of Wednesday afternoon, no high-profile elected Democrat in Virginia has asked Jones to withdraw.

Pressed by reporters on the scandal on Monday, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine called Jones’s comments “indefensible” but said he does not think the attorney general nominee should withdraw because, in his view, the disturbing rhetoric doesn’t reflect his character. Democratic Senator Mark Warner ignored reporter questions about the scandal in the U.S. Capitol on Monday evening. Most Democratic state legislators are dismissing the story, and Virginia Democrats in the U.S. House lucked out in that they’ve been out of session since the story broke, meaning they weren’t peppered with questions from a pesky congressional press corps.

Pressed on the scandal during a CNN interview this week, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that Jones has apologized and the question of whether he should withdraw is up to Democratic “leaders” in Virginia.

“What I understand is they say that on balance, he’s the better person to be attorney general,” she said.

There’s hope among Democrats that the Virginia voters who would’ve split their tickets because of the text message scandal have already cast their ballots. Others are hoping that on the debate stage this month Jones can convince undecided Democrats that the comments don’t reflect Jones’s true character. Other Democratic state legislators are dismissing his comments as a joke, even though he has since apologized for his rhetoric.

Other Democrats are worried, though, that the scandal will drag the ticket down, especially given how much play the story is getting in local and national media as well as in new Republican ad spending. The scandal is expected to be a major topic during Thursday’s gubernatorial debate between Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger and GOP nominee Winsome Earle-Sears, the commonwealth’s current lieutenant governor.

Those frustrated with Jones hope that this will play out like the 2024 North Carolina elections, when CNN tied salacious porn-site comments to an account associated with GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson, who lost by double digits but didn’t drag the Republican ticket or the president down with him.

And yet the domino effect continues. On Wednesday, James Fitzpatrick, director of the nonpartisan Center to Advance Security in America, filed a complaint with the Virginia State Bar requesting that Jones's law license be revoked, citing concerns that the texts revealed in NR’s report conflict with the ethics standards outlined in the preamble of the Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct. “Jones’ disgusting, depraved worldview makes him not only unfit to represent the people of Virginia, but it also makes him unfit to practice law,” Fitzpatrick wrote in his letter, first shared with National Review.

The Jones campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Spanberger Soldiers On

As of this afternoon, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger has issued just one statement on the texting scandal, in which she strongly condemned Jones’s rhetoric but declined to call on him to withdraw. A Democratic strategist who has been in touch with the campaign was told that the current strategy is for Spanberger to stay focused on her own race.

Spanberger notably did not mention the Jones scandal during a Monday evening fundraiser for her campaign in Fairfax, Va., according to two event attendees. Instead, she delivered her typical stump speech. Spanberger fundraiser participant and U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D., Va.) also declined to mention Jones in his remarks to the crowd. Instead, he gave the crowd an update on the latest goings-on in Washington, D.C., touted the successes he had as governor, and largely challenged Spanberger to do the same if she wins in November.

Attendees say that the event was optimistic and that supporters remain confident in her strong polling lead, but that the Jones scandal was a hot topic in many sidebar conversations among attendees, and there was a sense in the room that Jones was the “he who shall not be named” figure at the event.

The Spanberger campaign declined to comment for this story.

Meanwhile, Jones’s 2022 texting scandal was the talk of the town during a packed Tuesday evening fundraiser for Jason Miyares in McLean, Va. During his remarks, the incumbent attorney general said that Jones’s comments do not represent “the Virginia way.”