Virginia’s off-year elections have predictably lined up as a negative referendum on Donald Trump ’s fractious second-term agenda. But while the Democrats’ gubernatorial candidate, the centrist congresswoman Abigail Spanberger , looks to be cruising toward a comfortable win over Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears , there’s trouble two spots downballot. A scandal involving newly unearthed 2022 text messages from attorney general nominee Jay Jones has roiled his close race against incumbent Republican Jason Miyares and discomfited his ticket-mates (statewide candidates in Virginia run separately but often campaign together). While Spanberger and the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, Ghazala Hamshi, have denounced the texts, which wished terrible deaths for a Republica

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