2025 Virginia Attorney General election

The 2025 Virginia Attorney General election was held in the US state of Virginia on November 4, 2025, to elect the attorney general. Incumbent Republican Jason Miyares lost his bid for a second term to a challenge by the Democratic nominee Jay Jones in the general election. The in-person early voting period ran from September 19 to November 1, 2025.
During his campaign for attorney general, Jones received widespread condemnation after text messages from 2022 surfaced in which he joked about shooting the then-state house speaker Todd Gilbert and fantasized about the death of his children, while deriding a moderate Democrat who had received eulogies from Republicans. Despite the controversy, Jones did not lose the endorsement of any elected Democrats, defied the [|polls that predicted the reelection of Miyares], and won the election by 6.69% in a national blue wave. Jones became the first African American to serve as Virginia attorney general. Jones outperformed Kamala Harris from 2024, but largely underperformed Abigail Spanberger in the concurent 2025 gubernatorial election.

Republican primary

Candidates

Nominee

Jason Miyares, Virginia Attorney General

Democratic primary

Teo Armus of The Washington Post described the primary as a proxy battle between Dominion Energy and Clean Virginia, an environmental group meant to counter Dominion's influence in Virginia elections. Shannon Taylor received over $800,000 from Dominion, its largest ever contribution in a single race. Jay Jones received $579,000 from Clean Virginia.

Candidates

Nominee

Jay Jones, former Washington, D.C. assistant attorney general, former state delegate from the 89th district, and candidate for attorney general in 2021

Eliminated in primary

Shannon Taylor, Henrico County Commonwealth's Attorney

Declined

Steve Descano, Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney ''''

General election

Campaign

In October, a month before the election, a 2022 text conversation that Jay Jones had with Republican delegate Carrie Coyner following the death of former delegate Democrat Joe Johnson Jr. was made public by National Review. In the texts, Jones made disparaging remarks toward Republican members of the House, stating, "If those guys die before me I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves." Jones then followed up the remark by targeting then-Speaker of the House of Delegates Republican Todd Gilbert, giving a scenario in which Gilbert would be shot twice in the head. Jones said, "Three people, two bullets, Gilbert, Hitler, and Pol Pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head. Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know, and he receives both bullets every time." Jones would then take his remarks further, targeting Gilbert's children, wishing death upon them, and stating that Gilbert and his wife were "evil" and "breeding little fascists."
Jones received bipartisan condemnation for his texts. His running mates Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee in the 2025 Virginia gubernatorial election, and Ghazala Hashmi, the Democratic nominee in the 2025 Virginia lieutenant gubernatorial election, both issued statements condemning Jones's comments. Spanberger stated that she had spoken with Jones regarding her "disgust". Meanwhile, Hashmi stated, "I condemn it at every turn, Jay must take accountability for the pain that his words have caused", along with U.S. Senator Mark Warner writing that Jones's comments are "appalling, unacceptable, and inconsistent with the person known." Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell called the texts "a serious lapse in judgment that cannot be defended," while current Virginia House Speaker Don Scott condemned the remarks but stated that "we can't get distracted, because they want us to get distracted by the text message here or something else. Stay focused." Republicans, including Governor Glenn Youngkin, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Vice President JD Vance, called for Jones to withdraw from the race.
In Jones's initial statement following the publication, he accused his opponent of "dropping smears through Trump-controlled media organizations to assault my character and rescue his desperate campaign" and stated that his opponent "will continue to be accountable to Donald Trump, not the people of Virginia." Prior to the article, it had come out that in the same year, Jones was charged with reckless driving after driving 116 miles per hour on Interstate 64 in New Kent County. Despite Virginia's mandatory one-year jail sentence for reckless driving, Jones was sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service, half of which he served working for his own PAC, Meet Our Moment, along with a $1,500 fine. Jones would later issue a statement taking responsibility for the text messages and apologized to Gilbert and his family.
A criminal investigation was opened against Jones by the New Kent County Commonwealth's Attorney on October 9, stating that the documentation did not clearly indicate that Meet Our Moment was a political action committee and that community service must be performed at nonpolitical nonprofit organizations. On October 21, a judge signed an order recusing the New Kent County Commonwealth's Attorney and appointing the Williamsburg-James City County Commonwealth's Attorney as a special prosecutor to oversee the investigation.

Debates

There was one streamed debate, on October 16, hosted by the University of Richmond.

Polling

Aggregate polls
Jason Miyares vs. Generic Democrat

Poll source	Date administered	Sample size	Margin of error	Jason Miyares	Generic Democrat	Undecided
co/efficient	June 8–10, 2025	1,127	± 3.1%	44%	44%	12%

Results

By county and independent city

The counties and cities of Caroline, Nelson, Prince Edward, Spotsylvania, Waynesboro, and York voted for Miyares and Democrat Abigail Spanberger for governor.
Counties and independent cities that flipped from Republican to Democratic

By congressional district

Jones won six of 11 congressional districts.

District	Miyares	Jones	Representative
	54.0%	45.6%	Rob Wittman
	50.4%	49.4%	Jen Kiggans
	30.8%	68.9%	Bobby Scott
	32.5%	67.1%	Jennifer McClellan
	57.1%	42.6%	John McGuire
	62.1%	37.5%	Ben Cline
	46.2%	53.5%	Eugene Vindman
	24.9%	74.3%	Don Beyer
	71.5%	28.2%	Morgan Griffith
	44.3%	55.2%	Suhas Subramanyam
	31.2%	68.1%	James Walkinshaw

Exit poll

Miyares had the best performance among the three statewide Republicans in the 2025 Virginia elections. Miyares benefitted from ticket splitting among White and Hispanic voters, winning a majority of Latino men and Whites, while Jones won Black and Asian voters by large margins.