Democrat holds a healthy lead for Virginia governor, but one scandal could throw downballot races
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House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), who himself survived a politically motivated shooting, warned that Jones’ rhetoric revealed skewed judgment.
“Do you really want to elect that person as a law enforcement officer in your state?” Scalise asked in response to the texts. “Should other elected officials be accepting and condoning and endorsing that, or should they denounce it, which I did? Everybody should denounce it, and yet some won’t for political reasons.”
“I think it’s a gut check for people’s integrity,” Scalise told Blaze News. “If you’re willing to accept a call to violence because you’re more worried about a political party advancing than you are worried about civility in this country, that’s a real big concern for alarm.”
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It’s clear that extreme rhetoric is unpopular with Virginians. In the lieutenant governor’s race, Republican candidate John Reid has hammered Democratic candidate Ghazala Hashmi’s radical track record, including the time she boasted about teaching children books that were banned for containing explicit material.
“One of my concerns is violence. We seem to focus on sexually explicit material,” Hashmi said in a video obtained by Blaze News. “I don’t really care about that.”
“We teach the books that other people try to ban,” Hashmi said.
Even still, polling puts Reid and Hashmi within striking distance of each other. The latest polling shows Hashmi at a two-point advantage over Reid, although notably 7% of surveyed voters remain undecided.
“Ghazala Hashmi’s words speak for themselves,” Reid told Blaze News. “Any public official who says they ‘don’t really care’ if children are exposed to sexually explicit material in schools is completely out of touch with Virginia parents.”
“Parents deserve to know what’s in their kids’ classrooms — and when I’m lieutenant governor, they’ll have a voice and a seat at the table.”
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