Bravo, Virginia GOP, bravo. It is so rare to see such a perfectly executed “October Surprise” in politics as just happened in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The term “October Surprise” describes an unexpected political disaster in the twilight hours of the campaign. Sometimes they are intentionally positioned by political opponents to impact voters, often days before they head to the polls. They aren’t always successful, but they’ve become a staple of modern politics.
In the 2025 Virginia elections, there are three statewide offices up for grabs. The “lowest” ranking of the three, the Virginia Attorney General’s office, currently occupied by Republican Jason Miyares, has a competitive race between Miyares and Jay Jones, a former state delegate. Jones is the son of prominent Democrat judges, who also ran and lost in the primary in 2021 against the then-Democrat Attorney General.
The Real Clear Politics average shows the Democrats leading the governor’s race in Virginia, currently at 49.8 percent to 41.9 percent. The polls in the RCP also ask about the Attorney General’s race, and they uniformly have Jones leading, usually by less than in the governor’s race.
The way things work in the 21st century Virginia elections, the national “out” party, i.e., the party that does not have the presidency, almost always wins the mid-mid-term elections. And the governor’s race is always open, since Virginia law bars governors from running for a second consecutive term. Finally, usually all three of the statewide offices go to the same party, despite any incumbents (the other two offices allow consecutive terms).
So, with Donald Trump in the White House, the Democrats are the favorites.
Which sets the stage for the impressive "October Surprise" that the Virginia GOP just pulled off. Actually, the GOP hit Jay Jones twice. First, it came out that he had been arrested for doing 116 mph in a 45-mph zone, which in Virginia is considered reckless driving. But “the son of two judges struck a deal to skirt Virginia’s mandatory one-year jail sentence for reckless driving that allowed him to do 1,000 hours of community service and pay a $1,500 fine.” So he was sentenced to community service, where he then scandalously devoted half of his time to his own political campaign, obfuscating the court about how he did it.
But that, it turns out, was just the opening jab by the Republicans.
The haymaker followed. National Review Online reported that when Jay Jones was a delegate in 2021, he acted in an incredibly demented manner. The Virginia House was honoring the memory of a long-time African American delegate who had just passed, and the Virginia Speaker, Todd Gilbert, a Republican, as well as other Republicans, had said the usual salutary boilerplate statements to praise the deceased.
Jones then sent a series of text messages to a Republican delegate where he scoffed at the “glowing” tributes that were being made by Republicans. “If those guys die before me,” Jones wrote, “I will go to their funerals to p*ss on their graves” to “send them out awash in something.” Jones then suggested that, presented with a hypothetical situation in which he had only two bullets and was faced with the choice of murdering then-Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert or two dictators, he’d shoot Gilbert “every time."
When the Republican delegate expressed her alarm, Jones called her to explain his reasoning over the phone, where he shockingly doubled down, and later he tripled down with more vile texts, which among other things called Gilbert’s children “little fascists” who deserved to die.
It goes without saying that Jones' behavior was unbelievably and disgustingly evil, reckless, crazy, and stupid. It is absolutely beyond the pale of American political discourse.
Which makes it impressive that the GOP operatives were patient enough to wait till the very last month of the campaign to explode this scandal. Jones, although he had to know this was coming, seems to have made things worse for himself by doing nothing to prepare for it, not even by warning his own party. His first attempted damage control statement was tone deaf, where he claimed “all people” send these kinds of texts, and that Attorney General Miyares and “Trump controlled media organizations” were unfairly playing it up. Then, when this didn’t satisfy anyone, he acted in a more contrite and appropriate manner.
Obviously, as the meme says, the GOP is “pouncing” on Jay Jones. Gov. Glenn Youngkin has demanded that Jones abandon his campaign "in disgrace," and if he won’t, his Democrat ticket mates should ask him to step down. So has the GOP’s nominee for Virginia governor, Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears and Vice President JD Vance.
But his Democrat buddies are not biting, as they know that it is too late to replace Jones on the ballot. This is not New Jersey, after all.
So, Jay Jones is unlikely to step down from his campaign. I expect him to just ignore the scandal, as will most left-wing MSM organs.
But this scandal is big enough to take Jones down, considering where he is in the polling. This is because many of the over-educated Democrat voters in Northern Virginia pride themselves on being not “dyed-in-the-wool” Democrats, who are willing to vote for some Republicans. It’s not usually true, but that is beside the point. This race gives them a way to show their bipartisanship by voting against one of the three Democrats on the statewide ballot, the one who said obviously terrible things, without endangering what are considered the more important races.
I would guess that enough of them will do the right thing here, but you never know. The Democrats, as of late, haven’t been able to control their craziness.
Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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