Jay Jones, Who Fantasized About Murdering Republicans, Will Be Virginia’s Next Attorney General

Democrat Jay Jones prevailed over incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares in Virginia, a shocking end to a race upended with revelations that Jones had fantasized about murdering his political opponent and his children.

Jones is expected to cruise to victory alongside Democrat Abigail Spanberger, the governor-elect. The Democrats’ victories come after a campaign that was upended in October, when National Review reported that Jones had texted a Republican state lawmaker in 2021 that if he had two bullets and Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and the state’s top Republican in a room, he’d shoot the Republican twice. He said he wanted to see the children of then-Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Todd Gilbert die in their mother’s arms, because it would help him politically.

He reportedly also said he hoped that police would die for similar reasons.

On Tuesday, the story shifted from Jones to everyday Virginians. Did they agree with him? Did they find the rhetoric permissible? As of 9 p.m., 52% of Virginians said yes.

The Democrat candidate for lieutenant governor, Ghazala Hashmi, was at 55% of the vote, so only about three percent appeared to be Democrats who split a ticket because they did not support Jones’s violent hatred.

In one pre-election poll, 3% of Democrats said Jones’ comments actually made them more likely to vote for him, while almost all of the rest said that the comments didn’t bother them enough to make them vote for the alternative.

It looks like Democrats will have full control of the three statewide offices plus both chambers in the legislature, even though the state is evenly enough split that in 2021, Miyares won with 50.4% of the vote.

On October 7, Miyares told The Daily Wire that the election would determine whether the bipartisan collegiality that historically characterized the state was still alive.

“I think this election now is really a referendum on the Virginia Way,” he observed. “Is it now dead? Because I could tell you 10 years ago, it would have been unquestioned, not in a million years would anybody even consider — but there seems to be this mindset that power is more important than decency.”

He has said one woman told him she would be voting for the Democrats on the ballot, except for Jones, because she viewed it as a “test of decency.” She was, apparently, the exception.

The revelations were a black mark on the idea of early voting. Thanks to a 45-day voting window pushed by Democrats using coronavirus as a pretext, some people had already cast their votes by the time they learned of Jones’ murderous fantasies.

Jones was also convicted of driving 116 miles an hour, and performed his community service at his own PAC — something for which he is now under investigation.

After the texting scandal broke, Jones received especially vocal backing from the state’s Black Caucus, which dumped millions of dollars into his race.

Jones felt no remorse for his comments until as recently as last month, when he blamed Donald Trump and Miyares for his text messages, calling it a “smear.” He was vaguely more apologetic after Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat candidate for governor, put pressure on him, as he threatened to bring down the whole ticket.

Jones faced a difficult task in demonizing Miyares, whose record was already well-known from his relatively calm term as AG over the last four years. Instead, he sought to turn his own race into one that was a referendum on the presidency, repeatedly pivoting to discuss Donald Trump in his debate against Miyares.

Jones is the son of elites — his father was a Virginia politician and judge — while Miyares’ parents fled communist Cuba.

In Virginia, most criminal prosecutions fall under the auspices of county prosecutors, who are independently elected. But the attorney general’s office has jurisdiction over key areas, including election cases and corporate wrongdoing.