A prominent gun control organization’s website has pulled down its endorsement page for Jay Jones, the embattled Virginia Democratic candidate for attorney general.
The site scrubbing comes in the midst of fallout over text messages Mr. Jones sent about fatally shooting a Republican former colleague and his children.
Everytown for Gun Safety and its sister gun-control organization Moms Demand Action endorsed Mr. Jones, a former member of Virginia’s House of Delegates, on June 26. Everytown later contributed $200,000 to the Democrat’s campaign.
John Feinblatt, the gun control organization’s president, said at the time that Mr. Jones is a “committed gun sense champion” and that Everytown would work with him to ensure voters knew which candidates were making public safety a “top priority.”
“Preventing gun violence is a winning issue in Virginia, and Everytown will go all out to make sure voters know which candidates are making public safety a top priority,” the endorsement from Mr. Feinblatt said.
The groups also endorsed the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, Ghazala Hashmi.
“Virginia voters have made it clear that they want leaders who will tackle gun violence in the state. Ghazala Hashmi and Jay Jones are those leaders,” said Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action.
However, Everytown was recently asked by Fox News digital about its endorsement of Mr. Jones after the surfacing of text messages he sent in 2022 to Republican Delegate Carrie Coyner in which he pondered about fatally shooting then-House Speaker Todd Gilbert and said Mr. Gilbert should watch his “fascist” children die.
Everytown, though, did not say whether it would rescind its endorsement following the news about the text messages.
The Washington Times reached out to Everytown and the Jones camp to ask whether the June endorsements still stand.
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Chairman Alan Gottlieb said in a statement, “There’s been no announcement the endorsement was withdrawn.”
Mr. Gottlieb said, “Not a word about whether Everytown has asked the Jones campaign to return the $200,000 contribution made to his campaign in August.”
“All that appears to have happened is that the billionaire-backed organization is trying to hide their support of Jones from public view after we reported it in our statement Tuesday.”
Many Democrats have condemned Mr. Jones’ remarks but no prominent ones have called for his withdrawal from the race our pulled their endorsement, leaving them exposed to attacks from Republicans.
Mr. Jones said he apologized to Mr. Gilbert and his family.
“I’m sick to my stomach when I read those words,” he told WRIC, the Richmond-area ABC affiliate, last week.
“Certainly they’re objectionable, they’re abhorrent, they have no place in Virginia, no place in this country’s discourse. Again, I am so deeply, deeply sorry.”
National Review first reported that Mr. Jones wrote in a 2022 text that if he was given two bullets and was forced to choose among Mr. Gilbert and genocidal dictators Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot.
“Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” and “Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time,” he wrote to his Republican colleague.
Mr. Jones also reportedly said that if Mr. Gilbert and other Republicans who praised the late Democratic Delegate Joseph Johnson died before him, he would “go to their funerals to [urinate] on their graves.”
In a follow-up call to Ms. Coyner, Mr. Jones allegedly said that public policy only changes when lawmakers experience personal tragedy — suggesting Mr. Gilbert might reconsider his views if he and his wife lost their children.
Ms. Coyner hung up.
Things became even more fraught after Ms. Coyner told the Virginia Scope that Mr. Jones had previously said in 2020, during the chaos following George Floyd’s murder, that if a few police officers died, then maybe the cops would stop killing people.