USA TODAY National
A series of controversial text messages are threatening to bust open statewide elections in Virginia, where Democrats were hoping to make up lost ground ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones is facing intense scrutiny after he joked in 2022 that the statehouse speaker at the time should get "two bullets to the head" in communications that were accidentally sent to a Republican colleague.
The revelations have triggered a national backlash led by President Donald Trump, who demanded Jones immediately drop out of the race in an Oct. 5 post on Truth Social.
"It has just come out that the Radical Left Lunatic, Jay Jones, who is running against Jason Miyares, the GREAT Attorney General in Virginia, made SICK and DEMENTED jokes, if they were jokes at all, which were not funny," Trump said. "Even Democrats are saying it is 'RESIGNATION FROM CAMPAIGN' TERRITORY.
Other Republicans are pouncing on the scandal as well, particularly after the shocking Sept. 10 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which has sparked a national debate about political violence and free speech.
The reverberations could reach beyond the attorney general's race − in which Jones is squaring off against Republican Jason Miyares − and into the contest to succeed GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The off-year elections in Virginia are often seen as a bellwether for the next year's national midterm congressional elections.
The Virginia gubernatorial contest is considered a high-stakes race that national Democrats are hoping will be a boost for the party amid its rebrand and ahead of next year's battle for Congress.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger is currently leading Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the lieutenant governor, but the GOP is hoping the Jones mess could harm Spanberger's chances.
"Abigail Spanberger stands with Jay Jones," Earle-Sears, 61, said in an Oct. 6 post on X, that also tagged her Democratic opponent with jabs over transgender rights and support for the Biden administration.
Who is Jay Jones and what did he do?
Jones is a former state legislator who represented the Norfolk area before resigning in 2022. He won the Democratic primary for attorney general earlier this year against Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor by a razor-thing margin of roughly 2%.
National Review, a conservative media outlet, first broke the news on Oct. 3 that Jones had sent a text to Republican Virginia Delegate Carrie Coyner complaining about then-Speaker of the House of Delegates Todd Gilbert, a Republican, for paying tribute to a moderate Democratic member.
"Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head," the text Jones sent, repackaging a classic joke among Brooklynites about Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley and referring to Gilbert, the founder of Nazi Germany, and the leader of Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge.
Jones also slammed political centrism before realizing he had wrongly sent the text messages to Coyner, and then later added that he would "piss" on the graves of other GOP colleagues.
'Worst of the worst' GOP piles on Jones
In the aftermath, Jones has been hit with a ton of criticism by national figures, including the president and his political allies who say the comments underscore that he is unfit for office.
"Jay Jones is the worst of the worst. Democrats must stop calling Republicans fascist; this is exactly the kind of rhetoric that the left is using to tear this country apart," Adam Piper, executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association said in a statement to USA TODAY.
"Conservatives are being executed for their beliefs, and text messages like these are part of the problem. Virginia deserves far better."
Jones reportedly reached out to Gilbert, the former speaker, and his family to apologize. He has rejected calls to abandon the attorney general race, however.
"I cannot take back what I said, I can only take full accountability and offer my sincere apology," Jones said in a statement.
"Virginians deserve honest leaders who admit when they are wrong and own up to their mistakes. This was a grave mistake and I will work every day to prove to the people of Virginia that I will fight for them as attorney general."
According to polling taken before the revelations about Jones, the Democrat led Miyares, 51% to 45%, among likely voters in a Washington Post-Schar School survey.
Pressure falls on Spanberger
Virginia Republicans are now seeking to use Jones' message against the entire Democratic ticket, but particularly to turn voter's attention toward Spanberger, the nominee for governor, who expressed her "disgust" with the comments but fell short of calling on Jones to step aside.
The Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, for instance, both rate the Virginia gubernatorial race as a "likely" Democratic gain this fall. That Washington Post-Schar School survey, released Oct. 3, shows the 46-year-old former congresswoman with a 12-point lead over Earle-Sears among likely voters.
But Republicans are hoping renewed concerns about political violence and the type of public language used by elected officials will alarm Old Dominion voters enough to shift the race's trajectory.
Weeks before Jones' texts were uncovered, for instance, Trump and the GOP were linking Kirk's murder to broader messages casting Democrats as radical, hate-filled and violent. In Virginia, Republicans had already been looking for ways to energize younger conservatives furious over Kirk's death, and the text messages may give the Earle-Sears campaign a new launching pad in the election's final weeks.
The Earle-Sears campaign has also released an online attack ad featuring Spanberger praising Jones in the past mixed in with reports about the text messages.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a popular Republican who is limited to one term, also bashed Jones' text messages as "violent, disgusting rhetoric." He described Spanberger and the entire Democratic slate of contenders as Jones' "running mates" in an Oct. 4 post on X.
The Spanberger campaign did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment about calls for Jones to drop out, but in her previous statement the former CIA operations officer conveyed that she "made clear" to Jones that he "must fully take responsibility for his words."
Spanberger's campaign was already facing criticism from conservative opponents for telling supporters to "let your rage fuel you" during a Sept. 19 rally.
A Republican state lawmaker claimed the comment was why she received a death threat via text on Sept. 25, but the Spanberger campaign said there was no connection and that the congresswoman's comments were taken out of context.
In a YouTube video, Spanberger credited her mother for coining the phrase.
“And my mother just said ‘Let your rage fuel you.’ And so Mom, I love you, I thank you for the sage advice,” Spanberger says in the video. “And to the rest of us, every time we hear a new story, we let it fuel us. Every time we turn on the news, we let it fuel us. Every time something bad is happening, we say, ‘Oh, that’s motivation.’”
Contributing: Karissa Waddick, Bill Atkinson
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Sick' texts from Democratic AG candidate could threaten Spanberger chances in Virginia
Reporting by Phillip M. Bailey, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
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