Virginia has not voted for a Republican for either president or United States senator in more than 20 years, and with President Donald Trump‘s DOGE firings decimating the federal workforce that disproportionately lives in the northern quintile of the Commonwealth, Democrats should have an easy sweep in the state’s elections.
And yet.
It was probably inevitable that Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones would collapse behind the Republican incumbent in the polling after Jones confirmed that he fantasized about murdering not just a centrist Republican state house member but also the member’s 2 and 5-year-old children. But Democrat Abigail Spanberger‘s poll lead over Republican Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in the race for Virginia’s governor has shattered, going from far into the double-digits as recently as earlier in September to four points in the latest Cygnal poll and just three in Trafalgar’s.
Spanberger’s problem isn’t just that she refuses to call on Jones to withdraw from the race while she’s cosplaying as some sort of decent and centrist alternative to the Bad Orange Man. The supposedly decent and centrist candidate also cannot give a single affirmative answer to the following question: In taxpayer-funded spaces for minor children, should the state of Virginia legally qualify this person as a man or a woman?
The man in the mugshot, Richard Cox, is a Tier III convicted sex offender with a 30-plus-year history of sex crimes against children. Although Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has attempted to pass statewide rules mandating that people only use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their biological sex in taxpayer-funded schools and recreation centers, Arlington County allowed Cox to track the schedules of local girls’ swim teams alongside his stockpiles of child pornography and expose his penis to the women and underage girls in the city’s locker rooms.
In the debate between Richmond and Arlington, Spanberger has sided with the city over the state government. Now, Spanberger doesn’t just have a “child murder fantasy” problem, but also a child predator problem.
Spanberger can chalk up her politically suicidal loyalty to Jones to her own personal fealty and friendship (not that anybody believes it, but it’s a plausible enough excuse). But Spanberger cannot say whether the state of Virginia should allow Cox in a taxpayer-funded locker room of children for no justifiable reason at all.
BY STANDING BY JAY JONES, VIRGINIA DEMOCRATS GIVE PERMISSION SLIP TO THE VIOLENT LEFT
It is not illogical or impossible to imagine a Democrat who says, “While I support an adult’s right to change their name and pronouns and identify as the opposite gender in professional and personal life, all minors and occupants of taxpayer-funded spaces must adhere to the bathrooms, changing rooms, and athletic teams associated with their biological sexes.”
This is a political position that would have been considered radically progressive as recently as a decade ago, yet Spanberger just can’t say it. She may believe that Richard Cox is a bad bedfellow, but in the purity tests of progressive politics, agreeing with Youngkin or Trump on literally anything is even worse.
Hence, Spanberger heads into her final month before what should be a cakewalk of an election, trying to hem and haw her way around her child murderlust problem and her child predator problem. Until and unless she is willing to throw Jones and Cox under the bus, Spanberger will always be the radical option.