Virginia Democrats are suddenly facing the kind of mess that punches straight through their usual media cover-up. The resurfacing of violent private texts from attorney general nominee Jay Jones has turned Abigail Spanberger’s campaign from “safe” to vulnerable almost overnight, and conservative voices on cable have pounced — including a sharp critique from former Virginia Rep. Dave Brat on Fox’s reporting.
The texts, written in 2022, included grotesque fantasies about violence toward Republican leaders and even crude attacks on their families, and they have not been brushed away by Democrats’ tepid apologies. Party operatives who once shrugged at such behavior are now scrambling to explain why Jones remains on the ticket while the rest of us are supposed to believe this is somehow normal.
At the debate, Spanberger tried to thread a needle — calling Jones’ language “abhorrent” but refusing to demand he withdraw or clearly rescind her prior support, leaving Virginians to wonder whether she stands for principle or for political convenience. That silence wasn’t a mistake; it was a calculation, and voters smelled it immediately as Republican opponent Winsome Earle-Sears hammered home the point with relentless, personal pressure.
Republicans nationwide smelled blood and moved in, and rightly so — elected Democrats and some party leaders are still circling the wagons instead of holding their own accountable, while President Trump and others have rightly called for serious consequences. This isn’t about partisan cheap shots; it’s about whether Democrats will tolerate violent rhetoric from their candidates while lecturing the rest of the country on civility.
Conservative commentators and former officials — and no one is more relevant to Virginia than Dave Brat, the one she beat in 2018 — didn’t hesitate to call out Spanberger’s moral failure to lead on the issue. Virginians remember the 2018 race and they remember what leadership looks like: it’s not silence when a fellow Democrat fantasizes about murder, it’s calling them out and removing the stain from your ticket.
If Spanberger wants to keep pretending she’s the “pragmatic” Democrat who can put kitchen-table issues first, she needs to stop playing both sides and start answering for the company she keeps. Hardworking Virginians aren’t fooled by careful wording and media spin — they want leaders who stand for law and order, for families, and for basic decency, not the kind of ambiguous half-statements that protect political allies at the expense of public trust.
