In the race to serve as the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, one-term incumbent Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) is challenged by former Virginia Delegate Jay Jones (D-89th).
The attorney general has a constitutional responsibility to provide legal advice to the state government, including the governor and the General Assembly, to defend the state in lawsuits, and to defend the constitutionality of state laws. The attorney general is also second in the line of gubernatorial succession, after the lieutenant governor.
Traditionally, the attorney general’s office is used as a political stepping-stone for higher office and campaigns often become inappropriately politicized. In making the Off on a Tangent endorsement, I focus on issues that are germane to the role: understanding the duties of the office; respect for the fundamental human rights to life, liberty, and property; adherence to the plain text of the constitutions of Virginia and the United States; and a willingness to defend and enforce all duly-enacted state laws regardless of personal opinion.
Virginia attorney generals must be at least thirty years old, citizens of the United States, and hold the qualifications to be a “judge of court record.” They are elected to four-year terms and there are no term limits.
Incumbent: Jason Miyares (R)
Incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) stands for reelection as the Republican Party nominee for Attorney General of Virginia. He is nearing the end of his first term.
Miyares has served as an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Virginia Beach, campaign manager for former Representative Scott Rigell (R-VA 2nd), partner at the Madison Strategies political consulting firm, and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates representing the 82nd District. Miyares is Cuban American; he was the first Latino elected to statewide office in Virginia.
Our previous attorney general—Mark Herring (D)—spent eight years abusing the office and turning it into his own private shadow government. He was supposed to be the state’s defense attorney, but spent his time rewriting laws he didn’t like by re-interpreting them into oblivion and offering legal guidance that had no relation to the actual laws and constitution of the commonwealth.
Miyares promised to restore professionalism and uphold the law. He has done so . . . even when it led to criticism from conservatives who apparently wanted him to abuse the office for their crass political purposes the same way Herring did for his. I applaud Miyares for resisting that urge and doing his job.
If reelected, he promises to continue doing the same: interpreting and enforcing the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia as adopted by the General Assembly, regardless of his personal opinion about them. In cases where he has discretion, he errs on the side of upholding the fundamental human rights to life, liberty, and property, self-defense rights, and parental rights.
Miyares has also made, and will likely continue to make, serious efforts to improve public safety with effective law enforcement—including immigration enforcement—and perform overdue investigations of corrupt school systems. It is especially important that we continue investigating and correcting the insane, criminal inversions of “Title IX” protections against sexual harassment.
Challenger: Jay Jones (D)
Former Delegate Jay Jones (D-89th) stands as the Democratic Party nominee for Attorney General of Virginia.
Jones has worked as an associate with Goldman Sachs, an assistant attorney general in the District of Columbia, a private litigator, and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates representing the 89th District. He also serves on the board of Virginia Planned Parenthood (and says so proudly on his campaign website, as if eugenics was still cool).
Jones does not seem to understand what job he is applying for. If elected, he would be obligated to defend the laws and constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia regardless of his opinions about those laws. But, for some reason, his website is a bunch of partisan pandering.
He talks about an imaginary “right to abortion,” makes false accusations that Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) has somehow “attacked voting rights,” threatens gun manufacturers and gun owners, promises to interfere with property rights and the free market, and says he’ll protect Virginia “against the Trump administration” . . . whatever that means. Even if he was right (he isn’t), his opinions on these issues ought to be irrelevant. Jones is telegraphing an intent to abuse the office and make it his own little shadow government just like former Attorney General Mark Herring (D) did.
Jones has also been embroiled in a late campaign controversy. In 2022, Jones sent text messages to a colleague in which he fantasized about then-Delegate Todd Gilbert (R-15th) and his family dying so Jones could “go to their funerals to piss on their graves.” He continued by presenting a hypothetical scenario where he had only two bullets and could shoot Gilbert, Adolf Hitler, or Pol Pot . . . and said he would shoot Gilbert twice. Finally he accused Gilbert and his wife of “breeding little fascists” (see screenshots below).
In response to these revelations, Jones said, “I take full responsibility for my actions, and I want to issue my deepest apology to Speaker Gilbert and his family. Reading back those words made me sick to my stomach. I am embarrassed, ashamed, and sorry.” I give him credit for taking responsibility rather than denying and obfuscating . . . but these aren’t the kinds of things that normal, healthy people say about fellow human beings, even when they really dislike them. We know where this kind of irrational hatred leads.
Conclusion
Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) has been a refreshing change of pace from the corrupt, megalomaniacal abuses of his predecessor, former Attorney General Mark Herring (D).
It’s nice to have somebody in the office who is both aware of what the job entails and is willing to do it even when it comes to laws he doesn’t particularly like. It’s also nice that, when there is room for discretion, our attorney general favors protecting human rights instead of undermining them, and prosecuting corruption rather than being part of it.
There is no obvious reason to consider changing direction, especially when Miyares’s opponent—former Delegate Jay Jones (D-89th)—promises a Herring-style shadow regime unbothered by quaint concerns for things like laws, constitutions, and human rights.
Two other factors are disqualifying for Jones.
First, his horrifying text messages from 2022 are evidence that he was—and probably still is—seriously unwell (see screenshots below). People don’t talk like that unless they’re dealing with substance abuse, having a mental health crisis, or willfully burying themselves in hated and evil. None of these possibilities reflect well on a candidate for high office. He has not said anything about the first two possibilities (which are diseases); that points us toward the third (which is a choice).
Second, he exhibits incredible moral blindness. He is “the descendant of slaves,” and speaks proudly about his grandfather, Hilary Jones, who was a “pioneering civil rights attorney” . . . but also serves on the board of the state Planned Parenthood affiliate and was “proud to expand abortion rights.” How can he support an organization that was founded by a eugenicist and still disproportionately targets its anti-natal activism at minority communities? How can he support the institution of abortion, which, like slavery, can only exist when you mangle the proper order of rights and redefine “undesirables” as nonpersons?
He should know better.
Vote Jason Miyares for Attorney General of Virginia.
