The candidates for attorney general are engaging in the usual dumb back-and-forth over the details of debates that few outside the diehards actually care they participate in or not, and yet, here we are.
The debate over debates – this gets tiring, because it happens every cycle, up and down the ballot – began with Jay Jones, the Democratic Party nominee, declining an invite from WJLA for a TV debate with the MAGA incumbent, Jason Miyares, giving the Miyares side the upper hand in putting out the first mean quote.
“Soft Jay Jones made the right call here,” Miyares spokesperson Alex Cofield said. “His record on early release for domestic assault, murderers, and even child rapists was brought up early and often by his own opponent during his primary campaign. Now that he is forced to defend his own record against an experienced prosecutor, Jay Jones ducked the debate. It’s the right call — I wouldn’t want to defend his record, either.”
WJLA is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which sees itself as a competitor for viewers on the right to Fox News, so, it’s reasonable as to why Jones wouldn’t want to submit himself to a debate in the lions’ den.
Incidentally, this Alex Cofield guy offering the statement, he’s a young’un – a 2025 graduate of Hampden-Sydney who was promoted to press secretary after a summer 2024 internship with the AG’s office.
A kid barely old enough to shave calling out a party nominee for defending “child rapists,” that’s rich, particularly given that his candidate hasn’t had anything to say, on the record or off, about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.
I can’t blame that side for not wanting to talk about Trump and Epstein.
To borrow from Cofield’s quote, I wouldn’t want to defend that record, either.
The stakes in the debate tete-a-tete got raised with the Jones campaign announcing on Thursday that he had accepted an invite to an Oct. 16 debate sponsored by the Virginia State Bar.
Cofield, again, speaking for the Miyares campaign, raised issue with that debate being “a month after voters are able to cast their ballots,” a reference to early voting beginning on Sept. 19, and that the debate might not be broadcast live, even though the 2021 AG debate sponsored by the VSB that Miyares participated in with Democrat Mark Herring was live-streamed.
“Instead of a live broadcast debate that everyone could see, he has chosen a closed forum that has yet to finalize a moderator, rules, or format to try to defend his soft-on-crime agenda,” Cofield said, before concluding: “The attorney general looks forward to highlighting Jay’s policies that make Virginians less safe at every opportunity possible.”
Every opportunity possible, that is, except for in front of the nonpartisan State Bar.
Come join us on the Sinclair TV station, though.
Jones offered a statement on the Miyares bailout on the Virginia State Bar debate on Friday:
“Virginia voters deserve a fair and even debate, and that’s exactly what the nonpartisan Virginia State Bar – of which Jason Miyares and I are both members – can and will facilitate. As with every election, this debate is a necessary tool to share our policies with voters,” Jones said.
“Debates are about transparency and accountability, and it is increasingly clear that Miyares will do anything but talk about his own record of attacking Medicaid, threatening Virginians’ fundamental reproductive freedoms, and allowing Donald Trump to take a hammer to Virginia’s workforce and economy,” Jones said.
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Chris Graham
