ARLINGTON, Virginia—When scores of Democratic activists gathered outside a home in northern Virginia one evening last week before knocking on doors to get out the vote for next week’s statewide elections, they were treated to several speeches that emphasized the importance of voting Democratic up and down the ballot.
“There are races this cycle that will be decided based on the turnout that we can get up here. That’s why it’s so important to reach as many voters as possible here and make sure that they are voting blue straight down the ticket,” a Democratic field organizer told the crowd. When Kip Malinowski, the activist and homeowner hosting the get-out-the-vote event, rattled off the names of candidates the party is backing, it was his mention of the name Jay Jones—the scandal-plagued candidate for attorney general—that elicited cheers from the crowd.
U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas was among fellow Democrats on hand to rally the party faithful. “Why would a Texan care enough to show up in Virginia? Because you matter,” Crockett said. “People are feeling hopeless, and they need a little bit of hope injected into what’s happening, because all they see is madness and hate every single day.”
Crockett’s message against “madness and hate” was strange given her own embrace of what The Atlantic described as her “coarse style of politics.” Earlier this year, for example, Crockett called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, “governor Hot Wheels.” Crockett’s anti-hate message was stranger still, given the state of Virginia’s elections. The only toss-up race in Virginia is the campaign for attorney general, which pits incumbent Republican Jason Miyares against Jones, who has been under fire for 2022 text messages in which he wished death upon a Republican leader in the Virginia Legislature and his children.
The texts were first reported on October 3 by National Review’s Audrey Fahlberg. In one text, Jones said that if you had “two bullets” and put then-GOP speaker of the House of Delegates Todd Gilbert in a room “with the two worst people you know and [Gilbert] receives both bullets every time.” Jones also wished death upon Gilbert’s children, saying: “I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
It’s hard to think of a more hateful message than that, and it isn’t Jones’ only scandal: In 2022 he was sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service for reckless driving—he was caught going 116 miles per hour—and he’s now under investigation for devoting 500 of those community service hours to his own political action committee.
But Democrats have refused to ditch Jones. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger condemned Jones’ text but has dodged questions about whether she was still endorsing him, while most other Virginia Democrats continue to openly endorse Jones. Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia told The Dispatch at the Arlington campaign event: “They were private texts to a person he thought was his friend. I think it’s pretty obvious that the Republicans have known about them for years and have kept them waiting for an October surprise. And you know, it was terrible, and he’s apologized, and he should never do it again.”
The downballot race for attorney general would seem to be the kind of relatively low-stakes election that could allow other Democrats to earn some credit for insisting on some minimum standards of character and decency. Why is it so important for Democrats to stand behind Jones? “Four years with Jason Miyares would be much worse for the actual people in Commonwealth Virginia, than four years of Jay Jones,” Beyer told The Dispatch. “All those Democratic attorney generals who are suing Donald Trump to get back things have been taken away illegally and unconstitutionally, Jay Jones would be joining those suits. Miyares has not.”
That partisanship and policy consequences always trump the character is a familiar argument in our post-Clinton, post-Trump politics, but Virginia is now a testing ground for just how little voters care about the character and integrity of political candidates. “Twenty years ago, you’d say, with a story like that, ‘Jay Jones is toast.’ I don’t necessarily know if that’s the case,” Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics told The Dispatch. “I think it depends a lot on how much Spanberger wins by.”
The fact that Kondik’s question is not if Spanberger wins, but by how much, says a lot about the political environment in Virginia. For Spanberger to lose Virginia’s gubernatorial election seven days from now, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears would need to defy the polls—and history. Earle-Sears trails Spanberger by about 7 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, and over the last 50 years, Virginia voters have elected a governor who belongs to the same party as the incumbent president just once. (That was 2013, when Republican Ken Cuccinelli lost by 2.5 points while the Republican incumbent governor was beleaguered by scandal and a libertarian candidate took 6.5 percent of the vote.) A recent Washington Post poll found Miyares and Jones tied, but Miyares holds a 2-point lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
Spanberger has hit Earle-Sears over Trump’s economic policies—spending cuts and tariffs—and by focusing on Earle-Sears’ opposition to abortion. A sweeping amendment making abortion a “fundamental right” has already passed the Democratic Legislature once, and if Democrats maintain control of the body (as they are almost certain to do), they will vote to put the amendment before the voters in 2026. Earle-Sears noted at her debate with Spanberger earlier this month that the governor doesn’t play a formal role in the passage of constitutional amendments.
Earle-Sears has tried to gain traction with the Jay Jones scandal and before that with transgender issues. “Charlie Kirk was murdered, and then we have Abigail Spanberger refusing to tell Jay Jones to get out of the race,” Earle-Sears said at a campaign event in Sterling, Virginia, on Saturday. At the lone gubernatorial debate, Earle-Sears pressed Spanberger over her position on allowing male students who identify as female to participate in women’s sports and have access to girls’ locker rooms. Spanberger said the issues should be decided at the local level, and Earle-Sears retorted that Spanberger had voted in Congress to federalize the issue.
But so far, the fundamentals of the political environment seem to matter more in the governor’s race than any given issue. “In the governor’s race, it’s kind of unfolding the way you probably would have expected it to unfold as soon as Trump won last year,” Kondik said. As for Earle-Sears’ messaging on Jones and transgender issues, Kondik noted, “Spanberger didn’t send those texts herself. She’s not defending them. Spanberger doesn’t have this video clip of her talking about how there should be taxpayer-funded [transgender] transition surgeries for prison inmates” like Kamala Harris did.
In his closing message rallying support for the GOP ticket, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who was barred by term limits from seeking reelection, emphasized the importance of values. “This great Commonwealth of Virginia has led from the founding of this nation. This great Commonwealth has stood for morality when we needed to,” Youngkin said at a campaign event in Sterling on Saturday.
While the race for attorney general in Virginia has revealed a Democratic party that cares little about character, there’s no sign that the Virginia election marks the remoralization of the Republican party. Earlier this spring, Youngkin asked John Reid, the GOP’s 2025 lieutenant governor candidate, to step aside following allegations that Reid had posted lewd photos of men online. Reid, who is openly gay, denied the social-media account was his and stayed in the race. On Saturday, Youngkin and Earle-Sears were standing shoulder to shoulder in Sterling with both Reid and Matt Schlapp, whose Conservative Political Action Conference was hosting the event. Schlapp himself has faced multiple accusations of groping men. (Schlapp denies the allegations, but one accuser received a $480,000settlement after dropping his lawsuit against Schlapp.) Youngkin said on Saturday that Reid’s opponent had disqualified herself by backing legislation to legalize assisted suicide and making transgender surgeries a right for all Virginians. “Get out and vote,” Youngkin said. “Stand strong for the Commonwealth of Virginia: Elect Jason Miyares, John Reid, and Winsome Earle-Sears.”
