Heading into the home stretch of Virginia’s campaign season, the Democrats’ scandal-plagued attorney general candidate is apparently turning camera shy.

Jay Jones, challenging incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares, has canceled a Thursday fundraiser that was to be hosted by best-selling novelist David Balducci, according to the Beltway news outlet Axios.

“The scrubbed fundraiser is another indication that Jones’ campaign is in crisis mode,” the Axios report declared.

Jones, a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates, has been on the hot seat since the conservative website National Review broke a story Friday describing how Jones had engaged in text and phone conversations with a Republican lawmaker in 2022 in which he fantasized about shooting former Virginia Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert to death.

Jones has apologized for making the remarks, according to Axios.

He has not held a public event since Friday evening, the outlet reported. Questioned about the National Review report by WRIC-TV, the ABC affiliate in Richmond, Jones said, “The rhetoric has no place on our landscape.”

Since then, more disturbing stories have become public.

In April, 2021, according to Virginia Scope, a political newsletter covering the state, Jones wanted to have a Norfolk, Virginia, police lieutenant fired for donating to the legal defense fund of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who fatally shot two men during a confrontation amid rioting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020.

(Rittenhouse was acquitted after a grueling trial.)

Even worse, Jones is accused of suggesting in 2020 that the deaths of police officers in the line of duty might be a good thing.

“Well, maybe if a few of them died, that they would move on, not shooting people, not killing people,” Jones is alleged to have said.

(For the record, Jones has denied making that statement, according to Virginia Scope.)

The state’s top Democrats continue to support Jones, as CNN has reported.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate during her 2016 presidential campaign, told CNN Monday that Jones’ comments were “indefensible” but also “out of character.”

“So if I put the comments, which are clearly beyond the pale, against knowing this guy for 25 years, I’m still supporting Jay Jones,” he said.

Outside the party’s power circles, Jones’ reported remarks have roiled the attorney general’s race, and created ripple effects elsewhere.

Winsome Earle-Sears, the surging Republican gubernatorial candidate, has used them to criticize Democratic opponent Abigail Spanberger.

On Tuesday, according to Fox News, she released a scathing ad criticizing Spanberger’s failure to condemn Jones.

Even liberal MSNBC pundits are calling for Jones to step out of the race.

Jones has publicly shown no sign of getting out of the race so far, but the cancellation of the fundraiser Thursday night is not a good sign for his campaign.

Democratic donors who contributed ahead of the fundraiser have been informed that the Jones campaign will refund their donations, Axios reported, citing unidentified sources.

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