Virginians with even a modicum of decency were rightly repulsed by vile 2022 text messages from Jay Jones, the Democrat nominee for state attorney general, made public last week, in which he wished for two bullets to the head of then-Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Todd Gilbert—and for the killing of Gilbert’s two young children.
In purely “CYA” mode, Jones’ Democrat ticket mates running for governor and lieutenant governor were quick to join in the deserved condemnation of Jones’ despicable remarks.
But now, more than a week later, they still have not taken the next step and called on Jones to quit the race.
Appalling as that is, it comes as no surprise to those of us who remember the equally shocking case of Susanna Gibson, a Democrat who ran for the House of Delegates just two years ago. More on that in a moment.
At a candidate’s debate Thursday night, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican nominee for governor, repeatedly pressed her opponent, Democrat former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, to call on Jones to quit. Even a debate moderator repeatedly asked Spanberger about it, but the Democrat ducked, dodged, and weaved. Spanberger refused to answer whether she thought Jones should leave the race with what should have been the obvious one-word answer: “Yes.”
“We’re all running our individual races,” Spanberger stammered, when asked point-blank for a “yes or no” answer. “It’s up to every voter to make their own individual decision.”
No profile in courage, Spanberger’s unwillingness to declare Jones unfit for office makes clear her condemnations of him were as performative as they were perfunctory. (The same can be said of Jones’ abject apologies for the damning texts.)
Spanberger and the Democrat lieutenant governor nominee, state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, apparently can’t bring themselves to pull the trigger—metaphorically—and call the despicable text messages of the man who aspires to become the state’s top law enforcement officer what they are—namely, disqualifying for the job.
At Thursday night’s debate, Spanberger again denounced Jones’ violent rhetoric as “absolutely abhorrent,” but offered up only Kamala Harris-like word salads when asked repeatedly whether she thought Jones should quit the race.
The failure—not just of Spanberger and Hashmi, but also of other high-ranking Virginia Democrats, among them U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine—to call for Jones to step aside calls to mind a onetime favorite adage of the Left, albeit one used in other contexts: “Silence = Assent.”
That brings us back to Gibson, who refused to end a 2023 bid for the state legislature after it was revealed in September of that year that she had posted videos of sex acts with her husband on a pay-for-play pornographic website.
Then as now, top Virginia Democrats circled the wagons and refused to demand Gibson get out of the race.
State Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, the Virginia Senate majority chairwoman, criticized the release of the videos as “an invasion of privacy” and insisted that Gibson’s purported qualifications for office were all that really mattered.
(Despite the sex scandal, and perhaps because of the wagon-circling, Gibson came shockingly close to winning, garnering 48.8% of vote.)
Fast-forwarding two years, Locke and state Senate President Pro Tem Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, issued a joint statement in which they called Jones’ texts “deeply disturbing”—but apparently not “disturbing” enough to give up the chance for Democrats to win back the state Attorney General’s Office from Republican incumbent Jason Miyares.
Locke and Lucas insisted—laughably and evidence to the contrary notwithstanding—that Jones “has demonstrated the character and compassion the Office of Attorney General deserves.”
“There is no place for political violence or violent rhetoric in our public discourse,” Locke and Lucas tut-tutted and tsk-tsk’d, adding, “Jay must take accountability for his actions. But we will not allow this moment to distract from the urgent fight we are in for Virginia’s future.”
Likewise, after condemning Jones’ texts, Virginia House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, urged voters to keep their attention on the broader stakes of the election, the Virginia Mercury reported.
“We can’t get distracted, because they want us to get distracted by the text message here or something else. Stay focused,” he said.
For its part, the Democratic Attorneys General Association has given no indication it would ask for the $3.1 million it has donated to Jones’ campaign back.
In other words, for Democrats, it’s party and political power uber alles.
How do these Democrats propose that Jones “take accountability for his actions” if not by quitting the race in disgrace?
If not wishing death on a political opponent (or a sex scandal), what would it take to get Democrats to throw one of their candidates under the campaign bus?
No one doubts that if this had been Miyares, Virginia Republicans would have rightly demanded that he not only end his bid for reelection, but also that he immediately vacate his office.
You could ask then-U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., who in 2012 rejected calls from fellow Republicans to quit his bid for Senate after causing a political firestorm with insensitive remarks about rape and abortion.
Like Gibson, Akin insisted on remaining in the race, but unlike Gibson, he lost in a landslide. There might be a lesson there waiting for Jones on Nov. 4.
