Denver Riggleman said he still plans to vote for Democrat Abigail Spanberger in the Virginia gubernatorial race.
For Denver Riggleman, the calculus is in this year’s Virginia attorney general race is simple: support the candidate who doesn’t wish death on his political opponents, in public or in private.
That’s why, in the wake of the Jay Jones texting scandal, Riggleman, a craft distillery owner, metadata businessman, and former Republican congressman from Virginia who broke with his party following the January 6 riot, is voting for incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares in this fall’s closely watched off-year elections in Virginia. He believes that Jones — whom he never endorsed — should withdraw from the race.
“If you’re going to take a stand on political violence, if you’re going to take a stand on people who should be serving the Commonwealth of Virginia, it can’t be somebody who believes that death is the best way to enforce policy changes,” Riggleman said in an interview with National Review, highlighting that he’s still supporting Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger at the top of the ticket.
To maintain his integrity he says, “I sure as sh**” won’t vote for Jay Jones.
The former two-term congressman, who lost his 2020 GOP primary after officiating a same-sex wedding — has personal experience receiving death threats for his political views and his vocal criticism of Trump. He also cited his post-Congress staffing work on the January 6 House Select Committee, in which he worked to highlight alongside his committee colleagues the text messages that preceded the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol years ago, as reasons he’s taking the Jones texting scandal so seriously.
Riggleman’s decision to vote for Miyares this fall is significant in that he supports Spanberger and has aligned himself in recent years with Democrats, who have condemned Jones’s violent 2022 rhetoric but are sticking by him after the text messages were revealed in these pages last Friday. He’s hoping that his support for Miyares at the ballot box — especially at a time when he’s loath to support any elected Republican during the Trump era — will encourage Virginia Democrats, Trump-skeptical Republicans, and undecided centrists to split their tickets this fall as well in light of the scandal.
“In our commonwealth, you can come out and you can vote for Abigail Spanberger and you can vote for Jason Miyares,” he says. “I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
Earlier this week, Miyares called Riggleman and the pair spoke on the phone for about an hour, during which they discussed the stakes of this year’s Virginia attorney general race and the political fallout of the Jones texting scandal. Pressed for comment, Miyares’s campaign spokesman Alex Cofield told National Review that “Attorney General Miyares and former Congressman Riggleman discussed the Virginia way and the importance of the rule of law during a time when violent rhetoric is predominating our discourse.”
As National Review previously reported, Virginia Democrats have been told by the Jones campaign to deflect questions about the texting scandal by highlighting Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and Virginia Republicans’ refusal to harshly criticize the president’s decision to pardon individuals convicted in the January 6 riot.
Riggleman agrees that the GOP’s obeisance to Trump undermines the party’s claim to a moral high ground. “Any party that’s pledged loyalty to a person rather than the Constitution really has no leg to stand on to lecture anybody about principles,” Riggleman says, calling out Republicans for not criticizing Trump more in the years following the storming of the Capitol. “And I think that’s why you see Democrats trying to message and go after Trump a bit.”
And yet Riggleman also takes issue with how Democrats such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) are speaking publicly about the scandal, condemning Jones’s rhetoric while insisting that “on balance, he is the better person to be attorney general.” There are basic bars of decency that politicians should pass to win elections, he says. For Riggleman, Trump doesn’t pass that bar, nor does Jones. It’s remarkable that it’s even controversial to say that he’s against “voting for somebody who thinks that political violence is a viable way to change policy.”
Riggleman has told Miyares he’s disappointed that the attorney general didn’t condemn the January 6 pardons. But he said he was reassured during his private conversation with Miyares that the attorney general will “enforce the rule of law and do what’s necessary, regardless of party loyalties.”