Virginia’s Race for Attorney General, a Bellwether for America’s Two Parties, Gets More and More Compelling

WINCHESTER, Virginia — The one thing that has been consistent in covering Virginia’s off-year statewide elections since as far back as 1993, the year Republicans George Allen and Jim Gilmore ran for governor and attorney general, respectively, is that the races really don’t start moving until September.And when they do, they move fast.Mr. Allen began that summer trailing badly in his race against Democrat Mary Sue Terry. Early polling showed her earning 56 percent support of Virginia’s voters to Mr. Allen’s 27 percent.By September of that year, Mr. Allen had cut Ms. Terry’s lead to 6 percentage points from 18 percentage points, according to the Mason-Dixon polling at that time that showed him trailing her 46 percent to 40 percent.Mr. Gilmore, who was running against Democrat Bill Dolan for attorney general, had also moved into a close race against Dolan.Mr. Allen won by a whopping 58 percent of the vote to Ms. Terry’s 41 percent, marking the first time a Republican had won a statewide election since 1977. Mr. Gilmore defeated Dolan by 10 percentage points.The pattern repeated for GOP candidates in the race between Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds in 2009, and then between Governor Glenn Youngkin and the Democratic incumbent, Terry McAuliffe, in 2021.The headline race here is the one between Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican. The latest polls show Ms. Spanberger leading by double digits.Yet in the attorney general race between incumbent Republican Jason Miyares and a Democratic candidate, Jay Jones, who is further left than Ms. Spanberger, Mr. Jones only leads Mr. Miyares by 6 points, a statistically insignificant lead because of the margin of error.Several things might move this race further toward Mr. Miyares, beginning with Mr. Jones’s questionable behavior regarding two recent disclosures about his sense of entitlement and character.First on the latter: In 2022, Mr. Jones was busted for reckless driving by a state trooper for clocking an astounding 116 mph down Interstate 64 in New Kent County. It gets worse. 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. How he did the community service is where it gets even more interesting. In January 2024, his own political action committee, Meet Our Moment, which recruits and trains minority Democratic candidates to run for Virginia offices, and the Virginia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People both attested that Mr. Jones completed 500 hours of community service each.It gets worse — stunningly worse.On Friday, Audrey Fahlberg of National Review reported that Mr. Jones sent a Virginia lawmaker a text joking about shooting the former state house speaker, Todd Gilbert, saying that if faced with the choice of murdering Mr. Gilbert or two dictators, he’d shoot Mr. Gilbert “every time.”Beyond how flawed Mr. Jones is, what makes Mr. Miyares so compelling is that whether he wins or loses his re-election to his seat in November, he will still emerge as a formidable contender for Virginia governor in four years.Mr. Miyares, whose mother fled Cuba alone without resources as a teenager, did the improbable four years ago when he first ran for attorney general. He was the first candidate to defeat the incumbent attorney general in Virginia in well over 100 years.The contest between him and Mr. Jones, the scion of a Beltway political dynasty, is also an interesting microcosm of how much both parties, not just their bases but also their candidates, have changed.The former Democratic lawmaker is the son of two prosecutors who became judges. He attended prep school, while Mr. Miyares grew up in a house with a single mother and went to public school. This is a reflection of how much the resumes of candidates for both parties have shifted in the era of conservative populism.Despite being the incumbent, Mr. Miyares still faces an uphill battle. Virginia is still a pretty blue state, though he has done a good job navigating the electorate. He attends naturalization ceremonies embracing new Americans, yet he also enforces immigration law. One of his standard lines I’ve noticed in his stump speech is, “If your family came to this country looking for a better way of life and they thought America was freedom’s last best hope, chances are your family looks a lot like mine.”Heading into October, Mr. Miyares was likely down closer to 3, not 6. It is unclear what impact Mr. Jones’s speeding ticket and, even more importantly, the dark messages of shooting the state house speaker to a former colleague in the legislature have had on voters. In light of the murder of Charlie Kirk, it’s likely to be impactful.To date, Mr. Miyares has done a solid job of centering his run on local issues and avoiding national ones, much as he did in 2021, a volatile year for Republican candidates. Watching the first Hispanic American elected statewide in Virginia’s re-election efforts this year is the must-watch of the cycle.Creators.com

Virginia’s Race for Attorney General, a Bellwether for America’s Two Parties, Gets More and More Compelling

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