I read your piece about Jay Jones, and I have to say that 10 years ago, I would have paid attention and would have been more moved to reconsider a position. But now it is 2025, and we have normalized “grab them by the pussy,” cute notes to pedophiles, and making fun of people with physical or mental challenges. The excesses I have seen on the Republican side have driven me into a “shoot someone on 5th Avenue and they will still support me” situation with respect to Democratic candidates.
I’m not proud of that, and as someone who spent the most productive years of his adult life in his country’s uniform, it hurts my heart to see where we are today. I feel, however, that we are in a time when a single-minded focus at the ballot box is required. Nothing will sway me to support Jason Miyares, and me joining my voice in support to change out the Democratic candidate at this point in the race is in fact supporting Miyares.
As an aside I will also call BS on the timing of this revelation. These texts have been floating around for years, and if someone really cared and thought that they truly meant someone should not serve the Commonwealth in elected office, they would have released them during the primary so a more suitable Democratic candidate could be nominated. Thanks to Newt Gingrich, however, it’s not about most suitable anymore. It’s just about which side wins, and sadly, that’s where I’ve gotten to now, too.
I thought you might be interested to hear my thoughts because I think you know me as a reasonable person and someone who avoids extremes. I don’t suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Some of the things he has pushed forward are good, such as getting Europe to take more responsibility for its own defense. But there’s too much that is not good — such as trampling over the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment, and this latest whatever it was with Pete Hegseth at Quantico, not to mention today’s news cycle — pushing de facto loyalty tests for universities to continue to receive federal funds.
All of this means it will take a great deal more than some text messages to cause me not to shade in the box for Jay Jones next month, and that’s just where we are now.
ICYMI
- Immediately, if not sooner | Jay Jones needs to end his attorney general campaign
- Dem AG nominee Jay Jones releases new statement on Todd Gilbert texts
I tried to address the changing political mores issue in the column with my line about “Democrats are willing to cut bait when they find out that one of their own is vile, while Republicans double-down on the vile.”
Democrats pushed Al Franken out of the Senate for something that would today rank around 999,999 in the top 1 million vile things that Republicans have done, are doing, will do, for instance.
But what Jay said in 2022, and is now, rather meekly, trying to atone for – it’s bad.
While there are legitimate questions to be raised about the timing of the release of this, Jay would have known that this was out there – and it’s hard for me to figure that Democrats wouldn’t have known that Carrie Coyner had screenshotted the texts and sent them to everybody she knew, and that this could be an issue.
Somebody needed to be in a position to be able to persuade Jay to put his personal ambition aside.
I feel particularly sold out here because I endorsed Jay in the primary; had I known he was capable of this kind of nonsense, there’s no way I would have been on his side, and I’d bet enough of his voters in June would have gone the other way, too, and we wouldn’t be in this position.
Jason Miyares was wrong four years ago, and we can’t afford to have him filing frivolous lawsuits in our name for four more years.
But this is all on Jay Jones.
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Chris Graham
