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U.S.|Texts from Democratic A.G. Candidate Roil Virginia Governor’s Race
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/us/jay-jones-text-messages-va-attorney-general.html
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In the messages, the Democratic candidate for attorney general, Jay Jones, discusses the hypothetical killing of a Republican lawmaker.
Oct. 8, 2025Updated 7:25 p.m. ET
The texts from a Democrat who had served in the Virginia House were explosive. In one exchange, he suggested that the chamber’s Republican speaker deserved to be killed, mentioning the legislative leader alongside Hitler and Pol Pot.
Now, the Democrat, Jay Jones, is his party’s candidate in next month’s election for state attorney general, and the recent revelation of his three-year-old messages have sparked a fierce outcry from Republicans and rattled the Democratic ticket in a state where the party has had a commanding edge in the closely watched race for governor.
The messages have prompted Republicans to demand that Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic candidate for governor, withdraw her support for Mr. Jones, who has apologized and vowed to stay in the race to be the state’s next attorney general.
In a statement, Mr. Jones referred to the messages as a “grave mistake” and said he was ashamed to have sent them.
The emergence of the incendiary texts, first reported by National Review, comes as the country is grappling with the growing specter of political violence, particularly since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In June, Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband were killed at their home in a Minneapolis suburb, and last month the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a close ally of President Trump’s, was killed at a college in Utah.
Discourse in American politics has turned increasingly vulgar in the decade since Donald J. Trump launched his first bid for the White House, as he made coarse insults and brazen threats part of his public rhetoric, and others followed his lead.
