In the wake of a still-unfolding text scandal involving his Democratic opponent, state Attorney General Jason Miyares (R-VA) laid out what is really at stake in the coming election: what will happen to the “Virginia Way”?
Miyares spoke with The Daily Wire by phone on Tuesday, four days after a series of 2022 texts — sent by Democratic nominee Jay Jones to a Republican colleague — went viral, and he questioned whether the traditional collegial relationship between Virginia politicians, regardless of party, could survive the mindset behind them.
In the texts in question, sent to Republican Delegate Carrie Coyner, Jones had fantasized about the assassination of then state-House Speaker Todd Gilbert, a Republican, and declared that Gilbert would never change his political positions unless he and his wife were forced to watch one of their children die. He also said he’d like to “piss on the graves” of his political opponents.
“The ‘Virginia Way’ has always been the idea that even though Washington might not be civil at times, [members of both parties in] Richmond will be civil with each other,” Miyares said. “That’s part of why what Jay Jones has done is so troubling.”
“He knows Jennifer Gilbert, that’s not a stranger. Todd would bring his children to the assembly, so when he sent those text messages, they were only two and five years old at the time,” Miyares explained. “So this is not some type of hypothetical; this is someone that he worked with, this was a colleague. Then to say that he wanted to see two bullets in his head and then imagine saying that the children would die in their mother’s arms — this was not a stranger. He’s met the mother, he’s met the children, and in his mind, pain is the only way that change happens. That is a — I don’t know how to get my arms around that.”
Miyares said several times that it was difficult for him to fathom the mindset behind the texts Jones sent — the idea that violence was a reasonable reaction to political opposition.
“I think this election now is really a referendum on the Virginia Way,” he observed. “Is it now dead? Because I could tell you ten years ago, it would have been unquestioned, not in a million years would anybody even consider — but there seems to be this mindset that power is more important than decency.”
He went on to remark that it wasn’t just Jones — there seemed to be an abundance of Democrats who were willing to say that what Jones texted had been bad, unconscionable even, but those same people were unwilling to say that such comments should disqualify Jones from holding public office.
Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), for example, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, called for former Governor Ralph Northam (D-VA) to resign over a 20-year-old blackface photo in a college yearbook — but she couldn’t bring herself to call for the resignation of a current candidate who’d called for the assassination of a colleague over political differences.
“Don’t forget the context of this,” Miyares added. “Jay was upset that Republicans had done a eulogy and said nice words in remembrance of a Democratic colleague and his reaction was that he wanted to ‘piss on the graves’ of his political opponents.”
Miyares, who is of Cuban descent, said that was the reason he found Jones’ mindset so abhorrent – because he came from a “society where they would use violence to silence opinions.”
“Ideas were seen as so dangerous that it was morally excused to use violence to silence them. We said a long time ago in this country that we’re going to settle our debates at the ballot box and not with bullets,” he said. “The idea that somebody is seeking to be the top prosecutor — he’s never prosecuted a case in his life and would advocate violence against somebody he disagrees with and would want to piss on the graves of his opponents — I can’t imagine anybody in polite society thinking that’s acceptable.”
“My uncle Angel Miyares was arrested during the Bay of Pigs invasion,” Miyares recalled. “Castro arrested anybody that he thought could rise up against him on the island, and he was taken to an empty baseball stadium and he went through the humiliation of a mock execution. What was his crime? Ideas. His crime was simply — he was handing out anti-Castro leaflets in Havana. And he got put on Castro’s secret police radar, and they arrested him. When you suddenly take away someone’s individual dignity, their humanity, and you think that politics trumps their individual dignity, I can’t help that. I can’t – it is so outside of my worldview.”
Miyares brought the conversation back around to the “Virginia Way” and the idea that politics should not ever be an excuse to resort to violence.
“I view it as it’s not just me on the ballot this year, I view it as the ‘Virginia Way’ and the idea that we are going to — yes, we will have a basic standard of decency in politics today, and I think that’s on the ballot,” he said.
His final thought on Jones was a question about whether or not he was suited to the office of attorney general.
“Crime does not know partisanship. Being the people’s protector means I protect everyone,” Miyares explained, adding that he wasn’t sure how someone who openly called for a political opponent’s assassination could approach the job in a way that did not reflect that. “I think it’s safe to say that where he is is a very different mindset.”