emocratic Virginia attorney general hopeful Jay Jones gave an impassioned speech on race in 2019 which criticized then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam over wearing blackface — and then Jones embraced and campaigned with the disgraced Democratic governor during his unsuccessful bid to be attorney general in 2021 and again during his current bid in 2025.
The yearbook photo depicting two people, one dressed up in Ku Klux Klan robes and the other in blackface, appeared on Northam’s 1984 yearbook page at Eastern Virginia Medical School and came to light in early February 2019. Northam quickly admitted he was in the photo and apologized, then backtracked saying he’d actually appeared in blackface a different time.
The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, of which Jones was a part, quickly called upon Northam to resign the governorship, and Jones soon gave a fiery speech on the floor of the Virginia House of Delegates where he criticized the use of blackface and argued that the saga was proof that there was a “White Virginia” and a “Black Virginia.”
Jones walks back previous condemnation
In early 2021, Jones would express “remorse” for having called on Northam to step down, and Northam would endorse Jones’s bid to become the Democratic nominee for attorney general a month later. Jones would lead efforts to recruit Jones to run again in 2025 and Jones would again tout Northam’s endorsement this year.
During his first bid to become Virginia attorney general, Jones promoted legislative efforts to divest from the police, pull cops from schools, end qualified immunity for law enforcement, and abolish cash bail. As he centered his unsuccessful 2021 Democratic primary run on police reform and race, he repeatedly invoked Black Lives Matter icons George Floyd and Jacob Blake, claiming that those men could have been him.
Jones pushed for police reforms which echoed the “Defund the Police” mantra of BLM, and repeatedly claimed that he personally felt the knee on his neck and the bullets in his back when watching videos of Floyd and Blake. Jones frequently spoke of the “systemic racism” and the “remnants” of Jim Crow in Virginia, and pushed to get a Virginia cop fired for donating to the legal defense fund for Kyle Rittenhouse.
Jones endorsed the June 2020 criminal justice reform plan of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, of which he was a member, with the legislative strategy document of the black caucus including calls to “divest” from law enforcement just days after Floyd’s death and amidst the BLM rallying cry to “Defund the Police.”
Jones tweeted that month that “I’m a proud member” of the black caucus and that “we stand for justice.”
He lost to then-Virginia attorney general Mark Herring in the June 2021 Democratic primary, and Herring — who had also admitted to using blackface in the past — went on to lose to the Republican nominee, then-Delegate Jason Miyares, in the November 2021 election. Jones, who successfully won the Democratic nod this time around, is now seeking to defeat Miyares, who is running for reelection as the state’s highest law enforcement officer.
Jones did not respond to a request for comment sent to him through his campaign website.
Hellbound and Down 