"On August 8, 2022, a Republican state legislator received a disturbing string of early-morning text messages from a former colleague, Jay Jones, this year's Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general ... Jones, who at the time had recently resigned from the state house after a brief stint representing Norfolk, had strong feelings about how the political class was eulogizing recently deceased former state legislator Joe Johnson Jr., a moderate Democrat with a long tenure in Virginia politics ..."
""If those guys die before me," Jones wrote, referencing the Republican colleagues who were publicly honoring the deceased Johnson's memory, "I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves" to "send them out awash in something." Jones then suggested that, presented with a hypothetical situation in which he had only two bullets and was faced with the choice of murdering then-Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert or two dictators, he'd shoot Gilbert "every time.""
Virginia's off-year elections initially looked unfavorable for Republicans, with Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears struggling against Democrat Abigail Spanberger. Virginia has historically rejected gubernatorial candidates from the party holding the White House and has trended blue recently. National Republicans were focused on New Jersey's gubernatorial contest. Republican operatives obtained opposition research revealing that Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones sent early-morning texts containing violent, profane language aimed at Republican colleagues and said he would shoot then-Speaker Todd Gilbert in a hypothetical choice. The messages could create a political opening for Virginia Republicans.
Read at Intelligencer
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