The gubernatorial candidate appears to stand by the attorney general nominee amid ‘two bullets’ text scandal
Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger on Thursday evening refused five times to withdraw her endorsement of Jay Jones, the state’s Democratic attorney general nominee who has sparked outrage for discussing shooting a GOP colleague.
“Abigail, when are you gonna take Jay Jones and say to him, ‘You must leave the race?’” Spanberger’s Republican opponent, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, asked during their gubernatorial debate. “He has said he wants to murder his political opponent, and not only that—his opponent’s children.”
When Spanberger stayed silent, one of the moderators, Deanna Allbrittin, asked the Democratic candidate when she first became aware of Jones’s controversial text messages and whether she still supports his bid for Virginia attorney general. Spanberger responded by calling Jones’s comments “absolutely abhorrent” but did not address either question.
“I didn’t hear an answer there on the endorsement issue,” the moderator pressed Spanberger. “So, I want to just make sure. Will you continue to endorse Jay Jones to be the next attorney general of Virginia? And were you aware of these text messages before they were released?”
Spanberger again did not answer whether she still supports Jones. Instead, she accused Republicans of withholding Jones’s texts from the public for years and said that she learned about and denounced the messages the day they became public. “It is up to voters to make an individual choice based on this information,” Spanberger added.
The moderator then pressed Spanberger again, prompting the Democratic candidate to repeat that voters will make their own decisions.
“What you’re saying is that as of now, you still endorse Jay Jones as attorney general?” Allbrittin asked. Spanberger again declined to answer, instead saying that “it’s up to every voter to make their own individual decision” and that “I’m accountable for the words that I say, for the acts I take, for the policies that I’ve put out.”
The exchange comes as Democrats have faced growing pressure to disavow their endorsement of Jones since National Review last Friday revealed messages he sent in 2022 to Virginia house Rep. Carrie Coyner (R.), where he discussed shooting his Republican colleague, Todd Gilbert. “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” Jones told Coyner as he laid out a hypothetical “three people, two bullets” scenario in which he listed Gilbert alongside Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot.
Jones also wrote that he would go to Republican colleagues’ funerals to “piss on their graves” and “send them out awash in something.” He then suggested in a call with Coyner that he wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her own children die so that Gilbert would change his political views.
Spanberger has been no stranger to controversy either. In August, for example, Spanberger pledged to rescind Republican governor Glenn Youngkin’s executive order that requires state police to cooperate with ICE, as federal authorities arrested thousands of illegal immigrants in Virginia. Earle-Sears, meanwhile, supports Youngkin’s order and has praised Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
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