Virginia Democrats are bracing for the possibility of split-ticket results in the governor and attorney general races, which could pose a significant impact on policy and issues like redistricting.
While former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) continues to hold a lead over Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R), the attorney general’s race is increasingly looking like a wild card. Polls released in the weeks following news of unearthed violent texts sent by Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones in 2022 have shown an increasingly tight race between him and incumbent state Attorney General Jason Miyares (R), with some more recent polling showing Miyares leading.
A scenario in which Spanberger wins the governor’s mansion and Miyares retains his position would create a headache for Democrats in Richmond, who have voiced a desire to push back on Republicans and the Trump administration by any means possible.
“I think it’s very possible,” said veteran Virginia political analyst Bob Holsworth, when asked how likely a split ticket is in November. “I don’t know whether Jones has staunched the bleeding.”
“Clearly the issues would be harmful to him in the Richmond suburbs and in the Hampton Roads suburbs, but from what I’m hearing even internally, even inside the Beltway up in [Northern Virginia], they’re very problematic.”
The state’s attorney general race was viewed as one of the more competitive statewide races prior to Jones’s texting scandal, with Miyares holding a fundraising lead and Jones holding only a narrow lead in the polls. But the scandal has ratcheted up Democrats’ anxiety.
A Washington Post/Schar School poll released last week showed Miyares and Jones tied at 46 percent support among likely voters. Meanwhile, a Virginia Commonwealth University poll shows Miyares leading Jones 45 percent to 42 percent.
A Jones win could depend on how big of a margin Spanberger wins by. The same VCU poll showed Spanberger with a 7-point lead, while the Washington Post/Schar School poll had Spanberger up by 12 points.
“Part of the math equation here is that it’s a lot harder to lose on the coattails if your voters are not crossing over,” veteran Virginia Democratic strategist Ben Tribbett said. “I think to the extent that there’s anger at Jay, they’re not voting for him.”
Tribbett argued that Miyares faces a challenge winning with undervotes because he needs twice as many of them. Holsworth predicted Jones could benefit from undervotes.
“This undervote is going to be fairly sizable,” Holsworth said. “The Post poll said that there’s not a lot of people who are switching their vote from Jones to Miyares, but I think that’s more on the Democratic side. With independents, I think you’re going to see some Spanberger-Miyares votes.”
In Virginia, the attorney general’s office is separate from the governor’s administration. The attorney general represents the legal interests of the state agencies. Additionally, the attorney general is involved in cases challenging the federal government.
“It definitely slows down the administration,” Tribbett said. “Not always in a bad way, but usually in a bad way.”
The scenario is not unprecedented in Virginia. Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) each had Republican attorneys general when they were governor.
“When they had issues with the [attorney general] not being able to represent them because the [attorney general] didn’t agree with them, they were able to appoint their own counsel who could represent them,” Tribbett said. “So from an administrative perspective of Abigail as governor, she has some options at her disposal.”
But Democrats say President Trump makes the impact of this election particularly unique because their party’s state attorneys general have worked as a firewall between their state and the administration. According to the Democratic Governors Association, as of September, the country’s Democratic attorneys general have filed 50 lawsuits against the administration.
Miyares has predictably not taken part in those lawsuits.
“That’s been sort of the center point of this election,” Tribbett said. “This has to do with Trump and is Miyares going to join these suits with Trump.”
Jones has zeroed in on this argument in making his case against the incumbent attorney general.
“For the last nine months, Jason’s had 50 chances to sue the administration to protect us, to protect our workers, to protect our health care, to protect our K-12 funding, funding for law enforcement, and his office hasn’t done a thing because he’s too weak and too scared to stand up to the president,” Jones said at their only debate earlier this month.
Another factor is the state’s newly announced redistricting effort, which has added a last-minute wrinkle to the election.
Virginia’s General Assembly is slated to meet Monday in a special session to discuss issues including redistricting, mirroring moves made by Democrats in other states to counter Republicans’ redistricting moves to gain additional seats ahead of the midterms in states like Texas.
A special election on new congressional maps likely wouldn’t take place until next year at the earliest, but it raises the stakes for both parties in the Nov. 4 election. Democrats would need to hold onto the House of Delegates, which they control by a narrow majority, in order to move forward with the plan.
Miyares, meanwhile, could hinder those efforts if he were to win reelection, even if Democrats control the governor’s mansion and the statehouse.
“You can imagine that [Miyares] would bring every legal option to bear to delay or prevent the Democratic redistricting plan from coming into effect,” Holsworth said.
“Virginia voters should pick their elected officials, not politicians picking their voters,” Miyares told the Virginia Scope last week.
“I voted for the Nonpartisan Redistricting Commission and broke ranks with my own party on nonpartisan redistricting, to the point where I was removed from House Privileges & Elections Committee for taking a stand. Keeping politicians out of the process was the right thing to do then, and I strongly believe it is the right thing to do now,” the attorney general said in a statement to the outlet.
Jones, on the other hand, voted against the commission when he was a delegate and delivered an impassioned speech against it on the floor of the House of Delegates.
“Something we are seeing is the base I think nationally and in Virginia want to counteract all of this MAGA redistricting and with Jason Miyares as attorney general he’s going to hold this up in court forward,” said one Virginia Democratic operative.