Jones text scandal reshapes Virginia’s attorney general race — and tests Spanberger’s ticket

When Virginia’s two attorney general candidates are set to meet Thursday at the University of Richmond for what is expected to be their only debate before Election Day, the focus will almost certainly fall on one thing — the scandal over Democrat Jay Jones’s recently leaked text messages to Republican Del. Carrie Coyner that sent shockwaves through Virginia’s 2025 election cycle.

Jones, a former state delegate from Norfolk, has apologized for sending messages that referenced shooting former House Speaker Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah — comments that have upended the race and now threaten to define it.

In the August 2022 exchange, Jones told Coyner that if given a choice between Adolf Hitler, Cambodian dictator Pol Pot and Gilbert, “then Gilbert gets two bullets.” He later elaborated in a phone call that “it would take Gilbert’s wife holding their dying children in her arms” for him to act on gun safety legislation.

When the texts surfaced earlier this month, Jones did not deny writing them, but refused to follow widespread calls to drop out of the race.

The controversy has rippled beyond the attorney general contest, dominating all three statewide races. Republicans have seized on the episode to boost Attorney General Jason Miyares and GOP gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears. The Republican Governors Association poured an additional $1.5 million into attack ads aimed at Jones.

Cook Political Report analyst Matthew Klein said the violent rhetoric is “uniquely potent” in a year already marked by political violence — from the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump and the fatal shooting of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, to recent attacks on Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota.

In Virginia, multiple politicians, including Del. Geary Higgins, R-Loudoun, and Del. Kim Taylor, R-Petersburg, have reported receiving death threats. Former Democratic House candidate Susanna Gibson also said she was targeted in 2023, with a SWAT team called to her home.

In the Jones scandal, Coyner further alleged that the Democrat had suggested in 2020 that police officers would need to die before they would stop killing others, but he denied the claim.

Klein said the recent events underscore how partisan polarization has hardened voter attitudes. 

“It’s possible,” he said, that some Democratic voters could support their party up and down the ticket in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 4 election while still leaving Jones’ box on the ballot blank. Others, he added, may “hold their nose” and vote for him anyway. 

“I absolutely think this is a very competitive race right now,” Klein said. “Miyares has a decent chance to win another term, which was not something that I would have said even a couple of weeks ago.”

With early voting underway and calls for Jones to withdraw coming from both parties — including Trump and some national Republicans — Thursday’s debate is expected to be a critical moment.

The controversy has become a test of political loyalty, forcing Democrats to decide whether to stand by a wounded nominee or risk conceding the race altogether.

Local and national significance

Political analyst Bob Holsworth noted that gubernatorial candidates often capture most of voters’ attention during statewide elections, but he, too, emphasized the significance of the contest between Jones and Miyares.

“This is the most important attorney general race since Massive Resistance,” he said, referring to the campaign of opposition led by conservative state lawmakers in the 1950s to block the desegregation of public schools following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. “That’s because of the impact that the attorney general role has with the Trump administration.”

He pointed to Miyares’ influence over hiring and firing legal counsel at public universities. Attorneys general also serve as counsel to governors, and Youngkin has stacked university boards of visitors with his appointees. 

One such institution, the University of Virginia, has been embroiled in controversies this year over complaints about lack of transparency, pressure from the Trump administration to roll back Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies, and the resignation of its president following pushback from the White House. 

Immigration is another area where Miyares could remain a Trump ally while Jones stands to be his counterweight in Virginia. 

As detentions and deportations of undocumented immigrants have ramped up since Trump’s second term began earlier this year, Miyares has supported claims that the thousands of people rounded up were violent criminals. 

He and Youngkin could not substantiate that claim this summer, and records as of October show that a majority of those detained so far do not have prior criminal histories.

Klein emphasized that Democratic attorneys general remain one of a few checks on power against Republican majorities in Congress and the White House. 

While Virginia is in the process of potentially enshrining abortion protections into its state constitution, other states with bans have sought the extradition of people who travel for the procedure —  an area where attorneys general play a key role. 

Though the attorney general is a state-level position, it can wield national influence both politically and within the country’s legal system. From joining multistate consumer protection lawsuits that transcend state borders to serving as an ally or adversary to presidents, the office’s impact extends well beyond Virginia. 

Where Miyares has routinely supported Trump, Jones has campaigned on serving as a defender against the president. In recent months, Democratic attorneys general have joined forces on measures to prevent Trump from deploying the National Guard in their states and to block proposed changes to the Affordable Care Act marketplace. 

While attorneys general are not lawmakers, they can exert influence in the state legislature by endorsing or opposing key bills. Miyares has repeatedly used his office to oppose legislation allowing certain offenders who have demonstrated rehabilitation to shorten their sentences. In 2024, his office threatened to withhold state-appropriated funding from a victims’ assistance organization because it supported a bill that he opposed. 

Although Jones has not yet served as the state’s top lawyer, he has outlined priorities for the laws he would champion if elected. For instance, he plans to join multistate coalitions pushing back against abortion restrictions or bans and supports Virginia’s ongoing constitutional amendment process to enshrine abortion protections. 

Where Miyares could continue to act as an ally to Trump, Jones has presented himself as someone who would sign onto lawsuits challenging what he views as instances of federal overreach by the Trump administration. 

Up and down the tickets

Though Trump has loomed large over American politics at every level for the past decade, Miyares and Jones appear on the ballot this year beneath their respective running mates: Earle-Sears and Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee. 

While it would be rare for Virginia to see a split-ticket result, Klein isn’t ruling out the possibility. 

Beyond the state’s history of electing governors and executive tickets opposite the party that won the White House the prior year, Klein said he still believes Spanberger holds an edge for several reasons. 

While she has focused her campaign on outlining policy proposals, Klein said Earle-Sears’ fixation on issues such as transgender bathroom access and participation on sports teams isn’t widely appealing. Her “downright toxic” stances on same-sex marriage and workplace protections, he added, risk alienating voters and put her at odds with Republican lieutenant governor nomineeJohn Reid — a gay man who admits that the two don’t agree on his identity and who he loves. 

Klein added that the economic fallout from federal actions, including workforce cuts, has also become a pressing issue both candidates have had to address. Virginia, along with Maryland and Texas, has the largest concentration of federal workers in the country. 

“The cake was kind of baked there from the beginning with the DOGE firings,” he said, referring to Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. 

And downplaying the state’s economic hit, Klein warned, could cost candidates votes. 

Spanberger, meanwhile, has had to navigate GOP efforts to tie Jones’ text messages to her campaign. 

Holsworth said it’s a new strategy he’s seeing — one that suggests Republicans may spend the rest of the election cycle “trying to use the bottom of the ticket to influence the top.”

During last week’s gubernatorial debate, Earle-Sears frequently interrupted  Spanberger, lambasting her for sharing a ticket with Jones and repeatedly calling  for him to drop out. 

“Jay Jones advocated the murder of a man, a former speaker, as well as his children,” Earle-Sears told the moderators at one point. “What if he said it about your three children?” she asked  Spanberger directly. “I’m asking my opponent to please ask Jay Jones to get out of the race.”

When moderators pressed Spanberger on when she learned about Jones’ texts and if she endorsed him, the Democrat did not say explicitly whether or not he had her support. 

However, Spanberger called the messages “abhorrent” and suggested  she first learned of them when the story broke,  reiterating that  she had denounced them at the time. 

Signaling her intent to run her own campaign, Spanberger added, “It is up to voters to make an individual choice based on this information.”

With the controversy over Jones’s texts still reverberating across the campaign trail, Thursday’s attorney general debate will likely offer voters their clearest look yet at how both men defend their records — and how they define the office in a sharply divided Virginia.

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