History repeating itself for Democrats in Virginia

In 2021, it appeared that then-Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe was on his way to a second (nonconsecutive) term as Virginia’s governor.

The commonwealth is a purplish-blue state, thanks primarily to the Democratic stronghold of Northern Virginia.

But that election year, McAuliffe’s true colors on the issue of parental rights in education came out during a late September debate. The GOP nominee, Glenn Youngkin, capitalized on it with ruthless precision. McAuliffe’s campaign imploded, with the candidate digging himself into deeper holes in subsequent interviews. As a result, Republicans went on to sweep all three statewide races: governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

The 2025 statewide races are shaping up similarly after a texting scandal emerged in the attorney general race between Republican Jason Miyares, the current officeholder, and Democrat Jay Jones, a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates.

Jones ran for attorney general before, in 2021, but lost in the primary. The second time around, he became the nominee. He led in the polls up until early October, when news broke that he had once sent texts to a former GOP colleague in which he shared a fantasy about killing then-Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert and of Gilbert’s children dying in his wife Jennifer’s arms.

“Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, Hitler and Pol Pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” Jones wrote in August 2022. “(Gilbert) receives both bullets every time,” he also wrote.

After initially blaming the scandal on Miyares and President Donald Trump while not apologizing for what he said, Jones would later issue a statement apologizing profusely.

But the damage has been done, and not just to Jones. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger has also been caught up in the fallout. Though she condemned the remarks, she stopped short of calling on Jones to drop out.

And during the sole debate of the gubernatorial race, Spanberger repeatedly refused to retract her endorsement of Jones when pressed on the issue by the debate’s moderators.

More shockingly, when Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, personalized the issue by pointing out that Spanberger has young children and asking her if it would take Jones pulling the trigger on a former GOP official for her to demand he exit the race, Spanberger coldly stared straight ahead and refused to say a word.

An internal poll from Jones’ campaign that was taken and released after the scandal broke confirmed it had hurt him with independent voters, leaving him with a one-point lead, which is a statistical tie.

Another post-scandal poll, from Trafalgar, showed significant movement in all three statewide races, with Earle-Sears (45%) gaining on Spanberger (48%) in comparison to their previous polling, putting her in a statistical tie as well (the margin of error in the poll is 3%).

The lieutenant governor’s race is also now in a statistical tie in comparison to the previous poll, with Democrat Ghazala Hashmi sitting at 47% and Republican John Reid at 46%.

It also shows Miyares overtaking Jones, with Miyares gaining four points to put him at 49%. Jones had a six-point loss, which now puts him at 43%.

Needless to say, the Democratic nominees in all three races are getting hammered with ads in the aftermath of the scandal, with perhaps the most effective part being that they mostly involve the candidates doing themselves in with their answers and nonanswers to the texting controversy.

It’s anybody’s guess how this will ultimately play out at the ballot box. But if history is a reliable indicator, Nov. 4 may turn out to be a very bad night for Democrats across the board in Virginia.

North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.