The Advance Interview with Jay Jones

Jones is running for Attorney General, facing another Democrat, Shannon Taylor, in the June primary. He talked with the Advance about federal funding cuts, housing, civil rights, and more.

By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Democratic candidate for attorney general, Jay Jones. Photo by Martin Davis

As state-level races shape up, the run for attorney general is looking to be one to watch. Republican Jason Miyares is the incumbent and sitting on more than $3.3 million for the election in November. Facing him will be either Jay Jones or Shannon Taylor, both Democrats. Jones currently has about $1.8 million to use on the campaign trail, while Taylor has just over $1 million. After the primary in June, the winner should have little trouble raising funds to compete with Miyares.

The Advance sat down with Jones in Fredericksburg recently to learn more about why he is running, and what matters most to him.

Advance: Why are you running for attorney general?

Jay Jones: We’re running to protect Virginians and their families in the crazy era of Donald Trump, where federal workers are under attack, federal families are under attack. The uncertainty is making people feel less safe and less secure. We need an attorney general who is going to step up to fight for those folks, to protect those folks, to let them know that we work for them and not for Donald Trump.

People everywhere are feeling the pain, and they’re now trying to figure out what’s next, and that’s why I think this race is important. The current attorney general has had every opportunity to step up and push back against this administration, but for the last 100 days or so, he’s demonstrated that he’s nothing more than Donald Trump’s pro bono attorney.

Advance: What would you as attorney general do to address that concern?

Jones: We could join the lawsuits that have been put up by the other Democratic attorneys general from across the county. They have had success, and when you have success their states get these protections, and when you don’t participate like we have not, we get nothing. The current attorney general has hung us out to dry; he has told us time and time against that he doesn’t care about Virginians.

He doesn’t care about our livelihoods, he doesn’t care about our pocketbooks. And so that the first thing on Day One, join those lawsuits to avail yourselves of those protections, and then we get to go on offense. We can use the office to help average Virginians, help working Virginians, go after the price gougers, the big pharmaceutical companies, the corporate polluters, the corporate landlords, the folks who are making it hard in these really challenging economic times.

Advance: People in Virginia, and across the nation, are greatly burdened by rising costs, especially in housing. What could you do as attorney general on this front?

Jones: This issue is not limited to a particular area of Virginia — urban, rural, suburban — everyone has a housing issue, whether it’s supply or the cost of housing. As attorney general, we can really get ourselves involved in this, especially by going after these corporate landlords, who are raising the prices of rent. We can do this by holding them accountable.

I did that when I was an assistant attorney general in Washington, D.C., where we went after one of the bigger property management companies for overcharging residents. Even just a few dollars back in someone’s pocket in these tough times is a lot of money for people and can be used to defray the costs of food and your auto payment. We want to make sure we’re putting as much money as possible back in people’s pockets as humanly possible and using every mechanism of the office at our disposal to work toward that.

And then, if we don’t have the appropriate power, then going to the legislature to get the ability to do that.

Having the support of so many legislators is important to me because they know you are ready to go on offense and that we can work together to make meaningful change on the books so that we can enforce them.

We certainly will use our office as a pulpit to advocate for more housing—that’s something every single locality across the Commonwealth is in desperate need of—and to try to make sure its affordable for people. You’re seeing small apartments costing folks $2,000 per month. The rent is outpacing their paycheck, or paychecks, because a lot of folks have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. It’s untenable. So we’ll use the office not just from a legal perspective, but from an advocacy perspective as well, to make sure we’re putting the full weight of our office behind every solution that’s available.

Advance: We’ve seen a remarkable flipping of the civil rights argument in recent years. It affects many, but certainly teachers who are concerned about what they can and can’t say. How would you approach this issue?

Jones: My father integrated an elementary school in Norfolk and he integrated a high school in Lynchburg, and that was during the era of states’ rights, where the states were defying the federal government to integrate the schools.

Now we’re at this moment where we almost need to flip that on its head because the federal government is trying to harass, oppress, make sure that people are feeling scared, and how are we going to fight back.

Attorneys general are on the front line of that, to push back against the federal government, to sue against all the chaos and craziness, but then to support our teachers, to support our educators, to support our school systems.

You’ve seen Miyares target children in school systems over the past three years. Imagine if we are using the resources of the office to bolster and support our school divisions and support our institutions, to make sure they feel safe and protected. The job of the attorney general is to protect people, to fight for Virginians, to do the job for them day-in and day-out, not be a rubber stamp for the guy up in Washington.

We need change so that everybody can feel as if the office is working for them and not against them.

We have to enforce the constitution of Virginia, which says every child shall be entitled to a high quality education, and we’ve got to make sure we’re holding everyone to account. There are some funding shortfalls in certain jurisdictions, and we want to make sure everyone has access to the funds they need. We want to make sure we are using our office to support our educators, our teachers, and our children. From the K-12 perspective, we can really think differently about how to work with our school boards and localities to make sure we’re supportring them as opposed to targeting them.

Advance: The federal budget is shaping up to be one that delivers significant cuts. How would that affect the way you approach the attorney general role?

Jones: You sue to make sure you get what you’re owed and what you deserve, right? We are really worried about what this budget will end up looking like, the federal budget with cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, potentially Social Security, so we are fighting a multi-front war as it relates to federal workers and federal funding.

Our school systems are under threat. I’ve had school board members in various localities tell me that they worry about whether they’ll have enough money to pay the school bus drivers to take the kids to school.

These things are cutting so deep into our way of life that I don’t think anyone ever pictured it would be this bad. Even people who voted for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance didn’t think it’s going to get to this particular place. So anything that we can do to intervene we will do that’s in the best interest of Virginians.

Glenn Youngkin said there’s going to be a little pain, but this is probably nececessary. Say that to the fmailies who are struggling right now, the families who are about to lose these jobs. That’s tone deaf to me, and the attorney general hasn’t said a word about this. He hasn’t done anything to demostrate that he’s going to step up and fight for our people and fight for our schools and fight for our children, and that’s why we have very different visions for what to do wiht this office.

Advance: What would the proposed cuts to Medicaid mean to Virginians, and what could the attorney general do?

Jones: It would be devastating. As a legislator I voted to expand Medicaid, and it was the most proud moment of my legislative career to afford at that point about 400,000 people with access to healthcare. Now, I think, that number is upwards of 750,000. It was a tremendous achievement for us to finally get that done.

There are now people who are not just eligible for Medicaid expansion but are on the program anyway who are facing the loss of their healthcare, and that is problematic.

I’m excited because there are attorneys general who are working to push back on this, and I think the theory will be that it’s a nuisance to public health because people will be more sick.

The courts would be the ones to decide if that could go forward, but we would join that lawsuit immediately, because if they pass this budget, that’ll happen before the election and then we can get in with the rest of the Democratic attorneys general to push back on this stuff.

We’re talking about people’s livelihood, things that are core to our existence. To me health care is one of the most important things for all of us, and again, that’s why I was so proud to cast my vote to support Medicaid expansion. I’ll always fight to protect people’s healthcare.

Advance: Where you and other Democrats are going to have an uphill battle is on the issue of guns. How do address those concerns, and how do you campaign?

Jones: I think striving for safe communities is not a partisan issue. I have two little children—my older son will be 3 in just a couple of weeks and my younger son nine months old—and I have every vested interest in making sure they grow up in a safe community in Norfolk and that every child across this Commonwealth has the ability to grow up in a safe community. That’s why we want to go after the gun manufacturers who are making communities less safe by flooding the street corners with guns. I did that as an assistant attorney general—we sewed Polymer80, the largest ghost gun manufacturer in the country and we put them out of business, so good things can happen. You can take these folks and win and we’ve done that, and as Attorney General, I’ll do that, too.

There is this idea that being a Democrat means that you’re soft on crime and that’s not true. They’re not mutually exclusive things.

Advance: That’s how you’re going to be attacked (by Republicans).

Jones: I think my work speaks for itself in terms of being a refoermer when it comes to justice, but also being someone who puts communities and our safety first. Again, as a father, as a parent, it’s really important for me, and I think going after the gun manufacturers, these folks who are making our communities less safe, is of paramount importance. Having the ability to do that in this day and age is really critical.

We gave our law enforcmenet officers raises in the General Assembly. We’ve supported law enforcement and want to empower them to do their jobs. They’re asked to do so much in this particular moment, as crisis intervention officers, mental health intervention, domestic violence, and we want to give them the resources they need while also holding people accountable for making our communities less safe.

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