Day: November 5, 2025

Jay Jones, the Democrats’ scandal-plagued attorney general nominee who sparked a Republican-led backlash over violent text messages, secured victory in what turned into a high-profile race in Virginia’s statewide electoral contests Tuesday.

Spurred largely by anti-Donald Trump sentiments among voters, Jones defeated Republican Jason Miyares, the incumbent in the race who the GOP put much of its political capital in protecting. Republicans hoped the public outrage over Jones’ 2022 texts — where he detailed the hypothetical killing of a GOP lawmaker — would be enough to all but disqualify him from winning the post.

“To everyone who didn’t give up on this campaign: I say thank you,” Jones said Tuesday night. “I will protect our jobs, our health care and our economy from Donald Trump’s attacks.”

Jones had been leading Miyares in polling as the final month of campaigning approached. But the contest took a dramatic turn after the National Review reported that Jones sent to a colleague three years ago a series of texts that included “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head” — a reference to then-Virginia GOP House Speaker Todd Gilbert. The comments were quickly condemned by the party, but the scandal broke after Virginia’s 45-day early voting period began, leaving the party little recourse but to keep him on the ticket rather than ask him to step aside.

Republicans used Jones to attack Spanberger and openly questioned whether she could effectively lead the state if she was unwilling to speak out forcefully and call for a down-ballot candidate to end his bid. She condemned Jones’ text messages as “abhorrent” but refused to rescind her endorsement. Jones later expressed regret for sending the texts.

That left Jones, who makes history as Virginia’s first Black attorney general, to fend for himself. While some Democrats embraced him in the final days of the campaign including both Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine at a get-out-the-vote rally in Norfolk — the event’s headliners, Spanberger and former President Barack Obama, made no mention of him at all.

Miyares, who has ties to Trump’s former co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita, took advantage of his incumbency and lapped Jones in fundraising. He gave Republicans hope, even before the scandal, that he could be the party’s best chance at blocking Democrats attempts at a clean sweep of the top statewide offices.

“As much as I love Abigail, the most important position this year is the attorney general’s race,” said Del. Joshua Cole, a Democrat in Virginia’s General Assembly. “In Trump’s America, we need a Democratic attorney general, and the Republicans know that. That’s why they [pulled] out all the stops” for Miyares.

But the text messages weren’t the only issue Republicans hit Jones with. He also faced renewed criticism over a years-old reckless driving charge where he was caught driving 116 mph in a 70 mph zone and struck a deal to forgo jail time by paying a fine and performing community service. Jones reportedly completed some of those community service hours while working at his own political action committee, giving Miyares and his Republican allies more material to paint Jones as being “above the law.”

Jones’ texting scandal had the potential to drag down other Democrats. During an interview on “Next Question with Katie Couric” last month Spanberger lamented having to repeatedly answer questions about Jones.

“The fact that I have to spend even a moment’s time talking about somebody else’s text messages from years ago, rather than what I want to do as governor, is something that I am deeply unhappy about,” Spanberger said on the podcast. Weeks prior during the lone gubernatorial debate, Spanberger said about Jones texts: “The voters now have the information, and it is up to voters to make an individual choice based on this information.”

Trump also sought to tie Spanberger to Jones.

“Radical Left Lunatic, Jay Jones, who is running against Jason Miyares, the GREAT Attorney General in Virginia, made SICK and DEMENTED jokes…” the president wrote in a Truth Social post, giving his full endorsement to Miyares. “Abigail Spanberger, who is running for Governor, is weak and ineffective, and refuses to acknowledge what this Lunatic has done,” he wrote in early October.

While Republicans zeroed in on the Jones texts in the closing stretch, calling the attorney general race a “referendum on decency,” some Democrats pushed back on that line of attack before Tuesday night.

“Show me one of them that stood up and chastised Donald Trump about January 6, about saying that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody,” said Susan Swecker, a Democratic National Committee member and former chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia last week. “Don’t be coming over to my party and lecturing me about something that our nominee for attorney general did.”

Jones’ texting scandal, along with Maine Senate Democratic candidate Graham Platner coming under attack for previous social media posts, provides fresh challenges to DNC Chair Ken Martin.

He acknowledged in an interview with POLITICO Sunday evening that improving vetting of candidates in the future is something the party will have to evaluate.

“It’s not up to the DNC and to the party a chair to decide what’s disqualifying or not,” Martin said. “We all are gonna have to do a much better job of vetting our candidates as we move forward.”

​Politics

NEW YORK — The common theme that emerged from Democrats’ trio of wins in New York, New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday was affordability.

For all their ideological differences, Zohran Mamdani, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger found a shared language that aims at the heart of President Donald Trump’s populism: the high cost of everyday life.

Their wins suggest a recalibration of Democratic politics — from moral crusades to kitchen-table math.

Heading into the 2026 midterms, that formula will be hard to ignore. Democrats now have proof that campaigns grounded in affordability and competence can still unite the party’s fractious coalition — from democratic socialists in the nation’s biggest city to centrists in its quintessential suburbs.

“In a big-tent party like this, we’re going to have lots of different ideas, lots of different ways to accomplish the same goal, and that’s where we’re unified,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in an interview ahead of Election Day. “What is Zohran Mamdani, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger running on that’s similar? Affordability.”

The message wasn’t flashy — and it wasn’t new. But in a political landscape that’s been dominated by culture-war battles and Trump’s omnipresence, Democrats found traction by talking about rent, utilities and groceries instead of ideology.

Mamdani’s three main mayoral campaign pledges were simple: Freeze the rent for two million New Yorkers. Fast and free buses. Childcare for all.

The promises from the state assemblymember appealed to a broad swath of New Yorkers. Exorbitant daycare costs are an issue that even some Republicans, like Ivanka Trump, have talked about in recent years but that remains a burden for even well-to-do parents.

While Sherrill, a Democratic member of Congress, often talked about abortion rights in her campaign for governor of New Jersey, it was far from the most prominent issue. Her closing message largely relied on her plan to drive down utility costs — and blaming Trump for wreaking havoc on the economy.

A key plank of her “it’s the economy stupid” campaign turn was promising to declare a state of emergency and freeze utility rates when she takes office. Some progressives weren’t happy that she wasn’t talking more about immigration — an issue that another member of the New Jersey congressional delegation is now being prosecuted after taking on — but it didn’t matter.

Garden State Democrats knew that Trump drew in some of their core voters — Black and Hispanic voters — with promises about the economy during the 2024 campaign. But Sherrill bet that she could bring them back into the fold by pointing out how he hasn’t delivered.

Spanberger — a congressional Democrat like Sherrill — also resisted any temptation to center her Virginia gubernatorial campaign on the latest controversies from the White House and instead stuck to an economic message, specifically the cost of life for Virginians. Exit polls showed that was the top issue for voters by a wide margin, followed by health care.

The question now is whether Democrats can sustain that balance once governing — and inflation, housing costs and Trump’s shadow — put it to the test.

In their victory speeches, the trio hewed closely to their campaign messages.

In Brooklyn, Mamdani said that his election was a “mandate for a city you can afford.”

Though Sherrill closed her victory speech in East Brunswick by echoing the language of the “No Kings” protests, much of her speech was focused on New Jersey’s motto — “Liberty and Prosperity.”

“Liberty alone is not enough if the government makes it impossible for you to feed your family, to get a good education or to get a good job,” Sherrill said.

In Richmond, Spanberger said voters “chose leadership that will focus relentlessly on what matters most: lowering costs, keeping our communities safe and strengthening our economy for every Virginian.”

Former President Barack Obama, who campaigned this weekend for Sherrill and Spanberger, said during his New Jersey stop that people voted for Trump and Republicans “because they were, understandably, frustrated with inflation and high gas prices and the difficulty of affording a home, and they were worried about their children’s futures.”

“Now, nine months later, you’ve got to ask yourself, has any of that gotten better?” Obama asked.

Voters seem to think not.

Daniel Han and Liz Crampton contributed to this report.

​Politics

For Democrats, Tuesday night felt like 2017 all over again.

All across the country, Democrats won big, from the marquee races to the down-ballot contests. Counties that had shifted right a year ago veered back to the left, and the suburbs that powered Democrats’ massive wins in the first Trump administration came roaring back. Exit polls even showed Democrats improved their margins with non-college educated voters.

The strength of the wins hints at Democrats’ appetite to take on Trump as he ends his first year in office and voters’ concerns about cost of living.

Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill cruised to double-digit victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Two Georgia Democrats flipped seats on the state’s Public Service Commission, the first non-federal statewide wins for a Democrat in nearly two decades. Democrats flipped a pair of Republican-held state Senate seats in Mississippi, cracking the GOP supermajority in a deep-red state. And a successful California ballot measure delivered five additional seats for the party’s House margins ahead of the 2026 midterms, offsetting Texas’ redistricting push.

It was an injection of life into a depleted, depressed Democratic Party that had been cast into the political wilderness by Donald Trump’s decisive victory a year ago. Democrats, locked out of power in Washington, have spent the last year soul-searching and data-digging, as their brand sagged to historic lows.

But they also started to overperform in special elections, hinting that the tide was turning. And on Tuesday, their first big electoral test of the second Trump era, they didn’t just match the wins from eight years ago that had been a harbinger of a blue wave in the 2018 midterms — in several key races, they exceeded them.

“Virginians and voters spoke loud and clear that they’re pissed off at the Trump administration,” Christina Freundlich, a Democratic strategist who worked on the Virginia lieutenant governor’s race. “Democrats came out in record numbers, and this is a foreshadow of what we’re going to see next year.”

Democrats rode the traditional, party-out-of-power tailwinds, reenergizing its own base by pushing back on Trump’s second-term policies that have alarmed liberals. Spanberger’s and Sherrill’s messaging on the stagnant economy and affordability crisis helped their party bounce back in its first political test of the second Trump era — and by margins that even surprised some Democrats.

“After brutal losses, like 2024 and 2016, it is hard to trust polling … and your gut of what should happen historically. You can’t trust it,” said Stephanie Schriock, a Democratic strategist who formerly led EMILY’s List, a progressive group that elects women. “But everything, the internal polling, the organizations on the ground, the No Kings and Indivisible movement, the energy, it was all there.”

During Trump’s last midterm cycle in 2018, Democrats picked up 40 House seats — and Spanberger and Sherrill were part of that wave.

In Virginia, whose odd-year state elections are often seen as a bellwether ahead of midterms and presidential elections, Democrats flipped at least 13 seats in the House of Delegates. In the attorney general race, Democrat Jay Jones won by at least six points, overperforming expectations even as controversy mired his campaign’s final stretch, following revelations of violent text messages. Across the state, virtually every county shifted blue from former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 performance.

Spanberger’s double-digit victory was powered by a familiar set of voters: While she did better than Democrats from the past decade just about everywhere, her strongest gains were in suburban and exurban Virginia, including Loudoun County. Those are some of the same areas that powered Democrats’ resistance to Trump during his first term, but had drifted toward the GOP during President Joe Biden’s tenure.

In Prince William County, a wealthy enclave outside Washington, Democrat Ralph Northam won by 23 points in 2017; last year, Harris’ margin fell to under 18 points there. Spanberger won it by a whopping nearly 34 points.

And while slightly less dramatic, Spanberger’s strong showing in southeast Virginia could provide hope for Democrats aiming to flip districts held by GOP Reps. Jen Kiggans and Rob Wittman next year, even before potential changes from a redistricting push to help make that effort easier.

“The mood music is the same soundtrack,” Ian Russell, a Democratic strategist who focuses on House races, said of the comparison to 2018. “A deeply unpopular president, the same one, and a lot of Americans are very concerned about key issues like health care costs spiking.”

In the top races — the governorships in Virginia and New Jersey, as well as the New York mayoral — all Democrats cleared 50 percent support. The trio of candidates represent both ends of the Democratic spectrum: democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani and traditional moderates Spanberger and Sherill. Republicans are already salivating over the change to turn Mamdani into a boogeyman and tie him to more moderate Democrats across the country.

But Democrats argued “the throughline on all of these races was: talk about affordability,” said David Hogg, a Democratic activist who co-founded Leaders We Deserve, a group focused on electing young people.

“Tomorrow, there are going to be a lot of mischaracterizations and bad faith arguments about how every single policy Zohran ran on here should and will be applied across the country,” Hogg said. “Even if the policies aren’t transferrable [among states], what is transferrable are the tactics, listening to voters and not giving bullshit talking points..”  

Democrats’ are still battling a damaged brand, according to NBC News’ exit poll that showed that more voters in Virginia, New Jersey and California hold unfavorable views of the Democratic Party than favorable ones. But the Tuesday elections could inject new energy and focus into a party that has been without for much of the year.

Republicans, already feeling the traditional midterm headwinds, warned Tuesday’s results could portend serious challenges next year. That’s particularly acute without Trump on the ballot, as one national Republican consultant said, because “you get all the damage with none of the benefits.”

Another GOP strategist, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, said the biggest challenge will be figuring out how to turn out low-propensity Trump voters next year. The most troubling sign for Republicans out of Tuesday’s results were Georgia Democrats’ flips of the two statewide seats in a sleepy Public Service Commission race, the strategist added.

The state’s Senate race next year is almost certain to be among the biggest of the cycle, with Republicans looking to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.

“The one thing that would worry me, besides making sure you hold the House, is looking at how Democrats were able to fire up their base in some of these local elections in Georgia,” the strategist said.

​Politics