‘Reading back those words made me sick to my stomach,’ the candidate said. ‘I am embarrassed, ashamed, and sorry.’
Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate in Virginia’s attorney general race, has apologized for text messages he sent in 2022 in which he suggested that a prominent Republican receive “two bullets to the head.”
Jones is now on the defensive in a race where early voting is underway in Virginia weeks ahead of next month’s general election.
The Democratic candidate’s campaign did not dispute the validity of the texts, and Jones offered a public apology to Republican former House Delegate Todd Gilbert, who was targeted in the messages and was the speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates when the messages were sent.
Jones, who is challenging Republican incumbent Jason Miyares, said he was taking “full responsibility” for his actions and has faced bipartisan backlash since The National Review first reported on the messages.
Miyares criticized Jones and questioned whether his challenger was fit for the job.
“You have to be coming from an incredibly dark place to say what [he] said,” Miyares told reporters. “Not by a stranger. By a colleague. Somebody you had served with. Someone you have worked with.”
In one of the messages, Jones describes Gilbert’s children dying in the arms of their mother, Jennifer.
“I have been a prosecutor, and I have been obviously serving as attorney general,” Miyares said. “I have met quietly one-on-one with victims. There is no cry like the cry of a mother that lost her child. None.”
Gilbert, who had stepped down from the legislature earlier this year to become a federal prosecutor before resigning a month later, is not commenting on the text messages, according to a spokesperson for the Virginia House Republican caucus.
The reporting on the text messages comes as both parties are closely watching the current statewide races in hopes of seeing trends ahead of next year’s midterm elections, where control of Congress is up for grabs. Simultaneously, there’s more attention on the threat of political violence, following the shooting deaths of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband.
