A wildfire of scandal blazed into Virginia’s 2025 election Friday after text messages sent by Democrat Attorney General candidate Jay Jones came to light in which he fantasized about assassinating a Republican lawmaker — and wished death on his children over their policy differences.
The texts from 2022, first published by National Review on Friday between Jones and a Republican state legislator, showed that “Jones fantasized about shooting Todd Gilbert, the Republican who was then-speaker of the Virginia house; talked of pissing on the graves of Republican officeholders if they predeceased him; and expressed his belief that Republicans would only change their views if they experienced personal pain, and allegedly gave as an example the wife of Todd Gilbert watching her child die in her arms,” the publication said Sunday in a follow up to its scoop from Friday.
The Virginia Mercury noted the revelation “instantly reshaped a statewide race that had already been fiercely contested. After initially declining to comment, Attorney General Jason Miyares [the Republican incumbent], condemned his opponent during an impromptu news conference in Richmond Saturday afternoon.”
The revelations come barely three weeks after conservative icon Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA was assassinated, and merely weeks after he began warning about “assassination” culture taking hold among the progressive left on social media.
Kirk’s death has impacted young conservatives across the nation, including Virginia, where more Turning Point chapters are forming in the wake of his death. It also impacted Virginia’s electoral politics after the chair of the Chesterfield County School Board, Dot Heffron, a surrogate for Democrat nominee Abigail Spanberger, resigned after she posted a social media comment suggesting Kirk deserved to be shot.
By Sunday, Republican leaders, including President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears were calling on the 36-year-old Jones to withdraw his candidacy for Virginia’s chief law enforcement office against the incumbent Miyares.
Politico’s story put quote marks around “abhorrent” about the texts in its coverage of Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s scathing response and call for Jones to withdraw.
“There is no ‘gosh, I’m sorry’ here,” Youngkin said in a post Saturday. “Jones doesn’t have the morality or character to drop out of this race, and his running mates Abigail Spanberger, [Lt. Gov candidate] Ghazala Hashmi, and every elected Democrat in Virginia don’t have the courage to call on him to step away from this campaign in disgrace.”
Spanberger herself has been criticized for contributing to a flurry of violence against local candidates after telling supporters to “fuel your rage,” during stump speeches.
Soon after, WTOP reported, a man from Purcellville was charged with threatening to kill state Republican Del. Geary Higgins.
Gov. Youngkin “added in a post on social media, ‘Two Republican Delegates received death threats just this past week. It must stop. Enough.’ He was referring to Virginia state Del. Kim Taylor, of Petersburg, who received a death threat over text on Thursday.”
The Washington Post editorial board weighed in Saturday with a piece questioning whether Jones has the temperament for the AG office. Many Democrat figures issued statements critical of his text messages, but stopped short of calling for his withdrawal from the race.
Jones’ initial response tried to attack the reliably anti-Trump National Review as a “Trump-controlled media outlet.” It sparked even more outrage before he issued a new apology to Gilbert.
It did not appear to quell the furor over his text messages.
The Republican Attorneys General Association published the text messages on a website, (JayJonesTexts.com), and also called for him to withdraw.
Jones was already under pressure over reports of a speeding conviction for driving 46 miles over the speed limit and being allowed to do political work as part of his plea agreement.
Spanberger reportedly issued a statement critical of the messages, but had not posted it on her campaign’s X account. By Sunday, Lt. Gov. Sears had been running campaign ads about the text messages.
Almost like clockwork, Democrat-friendly publications The Washington Post, and The Hill released weeks-old polls that claimed Spanberger was leading in the race. They carry a whiff of suppression, given their late timing and how drastically the political landscape has shifted since the Jones texts came out Friday. Other polls have the race much closer.
The real poll is the voting itself, which we are two weeks into, with another four weeks to go before Election Day on Nov 4th.
We do know this: turnout for early voting is way up since the last gubernatorial election in 2021 by almost a 2-1 margin.
After Friday, it is likely to continue before the final two weeks of early voting when most of the early vote turns out. #
Early Vote Tallies at the Two-Week Mark: 2-1 Over 2021
As of Saturday, Oct. 4th, the number of “countable” ballots was 355,583, which reflects both the in-person voting tally (243,254), and mail-in ballots that are either “marked” or “pre-processed.”
As of Saturday, Oct. 4, some 553,282 absentee mail-in ballots appear to be approved for early voting, similar to the turnout for the 2024 presidential election last year when 70% of the electorate voted.
Voting data show that zero-propensity voters (active registrations but have not voted in years), are showing up in early voting.
This is about even with 2024 tallies that tracked zero-propensity voters and overall turnout at this point of the 45-day early voting stretch in Virginia. As the chart below shows, we have a ways to go in the voting.
Compare that with the past few years of early voting. (Presidential years are always higher in turnout):
Looking at the turnout over time since the start of early voting on Sept. 19 of this year, we see a spike in data for Sept. 30th, which is due to a two-day outage of Daily Absentee List (DAL) data that needed to be corrected.
EPEC Team is tracking the ballot types here as well:
https://epec.info/va-2025-general-election-early-voting-tallies/
In addition to electing a Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General, Virginia is deciding on a new House of Delegates in the Assembly. If the results from the 2023 race are any indicator, the races will be competitive.
This year, more Republicans are showing up in early voting tallies compared to 2023.
The big difference we are seeing this year are so-called “zero-propensity” voters, who are actively registered but have not voted in at least four years.
More on those trends, House Delegate races, and a deep dive on ballot status issues that we are detecting in our next report. #