Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro will campaign with Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger in the Old Dominion Sunday, and despite his strong track record in condemning political violence, he declined to call for Jay Jones—the Democrat attorney general candidate who fantasized about shooting his political opponent—to drop out of the race.
Shapiro’s spokesman, Manuel Bonder, repeated his condemnation of Jones’ comments but declined to answer whether he would call on Jones to drop out of the race or refuse to take the job of attorney general if elected.
“Gov. Shapiro has been very, very clear in condemning political violence wherever it appears, no matter who it is coming from or targeting—and he has been a leader in pushing back against the hate and division that is driving this violence all across our country,” Bonder told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday.
“As has been reported for weeks now, that condemnation, of course, includes Jay Jones’ reprehensible, inexcusable rhetoric,” he added. “It is wrong and unacceptable—period.”
James Markley, communications director for the Pennsylvania Republican Party, said Shapiro isn’t calling for Jones to drop out because Jones is a member of the governor’s own party.
“Josh wouldn’t call for him to drop out because he’s a Democrat,” Markley told The Daily Signal on Friday. He said Shapiro’s blanket condemnation of political violence “is fantastic” but he faulted Shapiro for failing to call out the Left specifically for the violence.
“At the end of the day, more political violence is coming from the Left right now, and it should be named as such—and he has a hard time doing that,” he said.
Markley also attacked Shapiro for leaving Pennsylvania to campaign in Virginia while the Keystone State has gone months without passing a budget.
“He obviously cares more about Pennsylvania Avenue than he does about ordinary Pennsylvanians,” the Republican quipped, alluding to Shapiro’s potential 2028 presidential aspirations.
Jones’ Text Messages
As National Review’s Audrey Fahlberg first reported, Jones wrote text messages in August 2022 saying that in a hypothetical situation in which he had two bullets and had the choice of shooting Republican House of Delegates Speaker Todd Gilbert or two dictators—Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot—he would use both bullets on Gilbert. He later suggested he wanted to see Gilbert’s children dead in his wife’s arms, and when pressed on it by the person he sent the texts to, he said, “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
Jones did not deny the story, but he did apologize.
“Like all people, I’ve sent text messages that I regret and I believe that violent rhetoric has no place in our politics,” Jones said in a statement. He later said he had issued his “deepest apology to Speaker Gilbert and his family,” adding that “reading back those words made me sick to my stomach. I am embarrassed, ashamed, and sorry.”
Yet even after issuing that statement, he accused his opponent, Attorney General Jason Miyares, of “dropping smears through Trump-controlled media organizations to assault my character.”
A Salient Issue in the Spanberger Campaign
Spanberger condemned Jones’ remarks, saying she was “disgusted” by them.
Yet Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, Spanberger’s Republican opponent, has called on the Democrat to go further and demand Jones drop out of the race.
During a debate earlier this month, Spanberger repeatedly refused to state whether she still supports Jones. She voted for the attorney general candidate on Sept. 19 in early voting, before the text scandal became public.
Shapiro’s Condemnations of Political Violence
Shapiro has repeatedly condemned political violence.
“Political disagreements can never, never, be addressed through violence,” he said after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year.
He repeated those condemnations in Pittsburgh last month.
“Unfortunately, political violence—and the hate that fuels it—is becoming far too common in our society,” the governor said. “In just the last year or so, we saw it in a field in Butler with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. We saw it on the streets of New York with the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. We saw it in the middle of the night in suburban Minnesota when an assassin took the life of Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and we saw it last week at Utah Valley University, with the assassination of Charlie Kirk.”
He noted that these incidents involved “different places, different people, different perspectives” but “one common thread—people using violence to try to settle political differences.”
Shapiro himself has suffered from political violence.
Cody Balmer, 38, pleaded guilty to attempted murder earlier this month. He confessed to setting fire to the governor’s mansion in April. He will serve a sentence between 25 and 50 years. Balmer told police that he “will not take part” in Shapiro’s “plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.”
Bonder, Shapiro’s spokesman, previously condemned the Jay Jones texts in comments to The Center Square.
The Pennsylvania governor will reportedly campaign with Spanberger in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia on Sunday.
