Decency on the ballot

When voters are asked to choose between their party and being a decent human being, they usually pick being a decent human being, which is why I am hopeful for Jason Miyares’ victory for attorney general of Virginia tomorrow.

Miyares’ race to retain his spot as the commonwealth’s top cop featured the ultimate “October Surprise” when screenshots came out showing his Democratic opponent, former House of Delegates member Jay Jones, had written disgustingly vile text messages wishing harm on a Republican elected official. He told a fellow member of the House in a 2022 message that if he had two bullets, he’d put them in the head of Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert. He went on to write that he wished Gilbert’s children would die so Gilbert could personally feel the pain of his policies, and said Gilbert was “evil” and “breeding little fascists.”

Awful in any context, the blue-bubbles were especially damning when they were first reported weeks after the murder of Charlie Kirk. At a time when the country was mourning the loss of a patriotic young leader and facing the distressing prospect of increasing political violence, Jones’ texts fed into our collective fear for the country’s direction.

Miyares now leads Jones in the most recent polling, even as the Republican nominees for governor and lieutenant governor trail their Democratic opponents. Virginia is generally a blue state, and Republican Glenn Youngkin’s upset victory in 2021 was a break from that norm.

Virginia has every reason to return to the Democrats now, especially given the strong anti-Trump sentiment in Northern Virginia, the suburbs of Washington, D.C. NOVA is home to many federal employees and contractors, and the Trump Administration’s brisk budget-cutting and agency-closing has left many unemployed or angry, attitudes exacerbated in the shutdown. Yet despite all the circumstances working against him, Miyares is ahead because of Jones’ text message scandal. As I say, when forced to choose between party loyalty and being a decent human being, when the chips are down and the facts are bad enough, Americans tend to go with being a decent human being.

That dynamic works against both parties. Alabama is as red as Virginia is blue, if not more so. When Jeff Sessions resigned as U.S. senator to serve as attorney general in the first Trump Administration, Republicans nominated former judge Roy Moore to replace him in a 2017 special election. Then multiple women came forward saying Moore had sexually harassed or assaulted them when they were in their teens, one as young as 14. The revelations devastated Moore’s campaign, and he ended up losing the seat to Democrat Doug Jones by less than two points.

I am a partisan Republican, and I don’t pretend the choices in these circumstances are easy for voters. I would not want to see a man who sexually assaulted teen girls as my U.S. senator. I also would not want to see a man who approves of mutilating teen girls through gender transition surgeries as my U.S. senator. And sitting on my hands and writing in “Mickey Mouse” isn’t a good option either when sitting it out gives the Democrat a real chance to win in a red state.

I’m sure Virginia Democrats right now want their attorney general to sue the Trump Administration into oblivion, but they also want an attorney general who is an acceptable role model for their kids. It’s a dilemma.

I wish the politicians caught in these scandals would have the decency to relieve voters of these tough choices by promising to resign as soon as they are elected so a governor of the same party could appoint an acceptable replacement. But that’s hoping for more than we can expect from many politicians.

In Virginia, there are enough moderate and independent voters who will migrate to Miyares to swing the election, even as they vote Democrat for governor and lieutenant governor. Miyares established a solid track record in his first term as a friend to law enforcement, an advocate for Israel, and a protector of parents’ rights in northern Virginia’s DEI-drenched public schools. I expect he will make it over the finish line tomorrow, and his doing so will be a validation that decency still matters in politics.