Dem
47
GOP
53
Maybe we are picking on the Bayou State and the Garden State unduly. But is there any state besides those two that is more likely to have a candidate for office be enmeshed in some sort of scandal? Maybe Florida, we suppose.
We had an item yesterday about Jay Jones (D), who is running to be the state's AG. The National Review somehow laid hands on several text messages that Jones sent to a colleague, in which he (Jones) suggested jokingly (but tastelessly) that a rival politician should be shot. With Charlie Kirk still fresh in the memory, this was not a good time for those messages to come out, and there has been much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments from Republicans, who have demanded that Jones drop out of the race. Meanwhile, Democrats, most obviously gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger, are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They don't want to appear tolerant of political violence, but also don't want to throw a candidate, particularly a Black candidate, under the bus this close to an election.
We have a fair number of readers in Virginia, and several of them wrote in with additional information about this story. We thought it best to share those messages now, as opposed to waiting until the mailbag on Sunday. To start, a lot of the people calling for Jones to step down say that the state AG is the "top cop" and you just can't have someone in that job who has embraced the use of violence as a tool. We repeated that framing in our item yesterday. Reader M.W. in Richmond wrote in to correct that misapprehension:
You called the attorney general of Virginia the state's "top cop," but this is a common misconception. I worked at the AG's office for over a decade. Except for a few specific exceptions, it's not a prosecutorial agency. Prosecutions are usually handled by a county's Commonwealth's Attorney, who is elected by the residents of the county (or independent city).
The AG's office is mostly just the state's law firm. It gives legal advice to state agencies and defends those agencies against lawsuits. When inmates sue their prison, or when students sue their university, the AG's office defends them. It helps acquire land and hire contractors for state parks and highways. The AG only steps into criminal cases after a criminal appeals his conviction to a higher court.
The AG probably should be appointed rather than elected, because the job needs a professional and not a politician in the office. There's an unfortunate tendency for Virginia voters to elect an AG from the opposite party as the governor, which makes the AG think he can be an independent co-governor.
Obviously, we did not have any sort of agenda in misstating the situation. But the folks who are trying to push Jones off the ballot, and who are repeating the "top cop" bit? They very well might.
Meanwhile, reader V.S. in Charlottesville wrote in with a couple of observations, including pushing back at our note that Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears may have cut her deficit in the polls to single digits:
Over 355,000 Virginia residents have already voted early in the election after over two weeks. This is likely at least 10% of the final vote tally. Polling that has come out recently indicates that Spanberger has a substantial lead among these voters, and I would assume the same is for Jay Jones. Since the ballots are already printed and being used, there is no way to replace Jones on the ballot, and a write-in candidate at this point is almost too late. It's like the National Review timed the release so the Democrats had no easy way out.
Also I wanted to correct something that you said regarding Abigail Spanberger losing her double-digit lead in the polls. It depends on which polls you look at. If you only look at the higher quality polls, she still has a double digit lead: Emerson, CNU, the Washington Post, VCU (9 points), and even SoCal Strategies, which is a Republican pollster. It's the flood of Republican associated pollsters that has her closer to 5 points. The issue with earlier polling in Virginia that showed Spanberger with an insurmountable lead is that the polls had too many undecideds and Winsome Earle-Sears had only 20 to 30 some percent of the vote. There was no way the final vote was going to have her at that level. Essentially during the summer, Earle-Sears consolidated Republican support that was lukewarm on her candidacy. Except for a few cases in wave elections, the Virginia gubernatorial race is usually within 10 points either way.
Reader A.R. in Arlington seconds the note about the polling, and adds a couple of other useful insights:
Regarding polling, there was a poll last week that had Abigail Spanberger with a lead in the single digits, which seemed like a major tightening, but on Saturday, there was a poll from the Washington Post/Schar School that had Spanberger up 12 points, 55%-43%. And just today there was a new poll from Christopher Newport University showing Spanberger with a 10-point lead, 52%-42%. So low double digits seems to be where we are now on the top of the ticket.
The Jay Jones situation is tough, especially because the current Attorney General, Jason Miyares, has been the most vocal culture warrior of the three Republicans holding the top three offices in the state. Virginia has no term limits for the AG and Lt. Governor, so he is running for reelection. We rarely hear anything from governor sweater-vest anymore on the culture war front. As you mentioned, there are reasons Spanberger isn't calling for Jones to withdraw, so right now it seems like he will ride it out to Election Day.
The other development on the topic of candidate quality is that the Republican candidate for Lt. Governor, John Reid, has his own problems, and is alleged to have created/operated a Nazi Porn account on Tumblr. Youngkin said he should withdraw from the campaign, but he hasn't, so now each team has someone with dirty laundry, even if they aren't running against each other for the same office. Reid's opponent is Ghazala Hashmi, and we haven't been hearing much from her. I think she is just betting on riding the anti-Trump coattails with the others.
Here is a story about the Reid scandal from New Republic.
Finally, reader B.C. in Richmond wrote in, also to bring our attention to the New Republic item, and to add this assessment: "As a (mostly) lifelong Virginian I think these two 'scandals' will likely cancel each other out. We all know off-year elections bring out ultra-partisans and the angry side usually wins. I would think that the Democratic side will ride the blue wave on Spanberger's coattails, but we'll see."
Incidentally, it's not just the New Republic that is reporting the Nazi porn story (and there's a sentence we never expected to write). Many other outlets have it, too. Here is the story as told by The Advocate, which can get away with being a little more... unvarnished than some of the more stately press outlets. Any readers who click through either story are likely going to have the same reaction we did: "Man, there are some messed up people in the world."
The conclusion here would seem to be that there's just no way Jones is going anywhere, given the late date, and that the Republicans who are kvetching about him (now including Donald Trump) are pretty much executing a Hail Mary pass to try to help GOP AG candidate Miyares, and maybe even to try to save gubernatorial candidate Earle-Sears. It may work for Miyares, since he's incumbent and that race is closer, but probably not for Earle-Sears. Anyhow, thanks to all the readers who wrote in with clarifications and additional information! (Z)