Six months is not a long time in politics — but apparently it is long enough for Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones to forget who handed him his career.
Jones stepped forward last week to publicly rebuke Governor Abigail Spanberger after she vetoed legislation that would have extended collective bargaining rights to public sector workers across the commonwealth.
The criticism landed with a particular thud given what Spanberger did — and didn’t do — for Jones last fall.
In October 2025, text messages Jones sent in 2022 became public. What they contained was not subtle.
Jones had written about former Republican Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert: “Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time.”
Jones also wrote that he hoped Gilbert’s children would die.
The messages ignited a firestorm.
Reporters pressed Spanberger repeatedly to withdraw her endorsement of Jones, who was running for attorney general on the same ticket as her gubernatorial bid. She refused to answer directly.
During a debate against Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, Spanberger called the texts “abhorrent” — and stopped there. She would not say whether Jones deserved to remain her running mate in all but name.
When the questions followed her onto the campaign trail, Spanberger’s patience wore thin.
“The fact that I have to spend even a moment’s time talking about somebody else’s text message from years ago rather than what I want to do as governor is something that I am deeply unhappy about,” she told Katie Couric in an interview at the time.
Her campaign kept selling merchandise with Jones’s name on it. She never pulled the plug.
In November, Virginia voters rewarded Spanberger with a commanding victory over Sears — a margin exceeding 15 points.
Jones crossed the finish line too, beating incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares by six points, though he trailed Spanberger by nearly nine points on the same ballot.
Richmond political analyst Bob Holsworth saw Jones’s fate coming before a single vote was cast.
“Jones’s fate is dependent on Spanberger winning by double digits or close to double digits for him to have a chance,” Holsworth told The Washingtonian the week before Election Day.
The Hill reported around the same time that Democratic strategists were openly anxious about a split-ticket outcome — a scenario in which voters chose Spanberger for governor while leaving Jones behind.
That didn’t happen. Jones won. And last Thursday, he thanked Spanberger by criticizing her in a public statement.
Spanberger had vetoed Senate Bill 378 and House Bill 1263, legislation that passed the General Assembly with near-unanimous Democratic support and which would have allowed most public employees statewide to organize and negotiate over wages, benefits, and workplace conditions.
Current Virginia law requires local governments to grant permission before any collective bargaining can take place.
Spanberger had previously attempted to send the bill back with amendments — changes the General Assembly rejected before returning the original legislation to her desk.
Jones wasted no time weighing in, issuing a statement to local reporter Brandon Jarvis.
“The Governor is charged with making hard decisions in an office that carries extraordinary responsibility, but I join union members, home care workers, public servants, and working families across the Commonwealth in their disappointment in today’s veto,” Jones said.
Virginia House Republican leader Terry Kilgore, meanwhile, welcomed the veto, stating the bill “would have driven up local taxes unsustainably.”
Jones’s willingness to go after Spanberger publicly stands out for one reason above all others: by any credible political analysis, he would not be attorney general today had she not carried him across the finish line — after declining, twice, to condemn what he had written about a political opponent and that opponent’s children.
