Political fireworks erupted across the state after Virginia’s high-stakes Tuesday primaries, with top candidates wasting no time going on offense slamming their opponents, invoking President Donald Trump, and setting the tone for what’s expected to be a bruising general election.
Democratic nominee for Attorney General Jay Jones lit the match Tuesday night, telling supporters that Trump is still pulling strings in Virginia politics.
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“Donald Trump and his cronies will spend so much money trying to beat us in November by funding his personal attorney, Jason Miyares,” Jones declared in his primary victory speech. “We are ready for that fight. For the last four years, Jason Miyares has put his own political agenda before the people.”
Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares fired back in a pointed interview Wednesday on WMAL Radio, calling Jones’s rhetoric “laughable” and questioning his qualifications.
“He brings that criminal-first, victim-last mindset,” Miyares said, painting Jones as an extreme progressive. “When I took office, Virginia’s murder rate was at a 20-year high. Now, we’ve led the nation in reducing addiction deaths. I’m proud to be the people’s protector.”
Miyares also dismissed Jones’s experience in D.C. as an assistant attorney general: “Nobody looks at D.C. as a model of public safety. He’s never prosecuted a case in his life, but he wants to be the top prosecutor in Virginia? I find that laughable.”
While Attorney General candidates clashed head-on, the gubernatorial race between Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Republican Virginia Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears remained more subdued, but it is not expected to stay that way.
Spanberger is a former CIA officer who represented Virginia’s 7th Congressional District from 2019 to 2025. Earle-Sears, a Marine Corps veteran, is Virginia’s first female lieutenant governor and the first woman of color elected to statewide office. She’s now running to succeed her colleague, popular Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Earle-Sears took a swing on Wednesday, accusing Spanberger of enabling crime.
“If Spanberger wins, expect more crime, more chaos, and less safety,” she wrote on X.
Spanberger, however, avoided personal attacks, instead debuting a bipartisan-themed ad.
“Despite the dysfunction, I got things done and was named the most bipartisan member of Congress from Virginia,” she said in the television spot, emphasizing her CIA background and focus on education and job readiness.
“Word not appearing in Spanberger’s new TV ad: Democrat,” one political observer noted on X.
Though both women are poised to make history — as one of them will become Virginia’s first elected female governor — gender has played little role in the early stages of the race.
In the lieutenant governor contest, State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi won the Democratic primary and quickly took aim at Republican nominee John Reid.
“While John Reid was trying to hide from his extremist record, I was meeting with legislators fighting for health care for rural communities,” she posted on X.
Just got home and found out who the Democrats picked to run against me for Lt. Governor.
— John Reid (@JohnReid4VA) June 18, 2025
Here’s what I am thinking…. pic.twitter.com/ykLmEYvBZA
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Reid responded by tying Hashmi to what he called “radical overreach.”
“Sen. Hashmi has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for high taxes, anti-business, and trans-radicalism,” he said. “Everything wrong in modern Virginia is a result of her party’s social justice warrior radicalism.”