Virginia Republican (Carrie Coyner) who shared violent texts from prominent Democrat loses re-election

Source: The Guardian

Virginia Republican who shared violent texts from prominent Democrat loses re-election

Carrie Coyner conceded defeat after igniting text scandal over Democrat imagining ‘two bullets’ in rival’s head

Ramon Antonio Vargas
Fri 7 Nov 2025 19.59 GMT
First published on Fri 7 Nov 2025 15.40 GMT

The Virginia Republican politician who shook up multiple statewide elections by disclosing text messages in which a prominent Democratic candidate fantasized about a rival receiving “two bullets to the head” has conceded defeat in her own bid to retain office.

Carrie Coyner was seeking a third two-year term in Virginia’s house of delegates when she publicly shared the text messages that she had previously received from Jay Jones, a former Democratic colleague who ran in the state’s attorney general election on Tuesday.

Some projected that the controversy that erupted surrounding the texts would derail Jones’s campaign while also complicating his fellow Democrat Abigail Spanberger’s run for Virginia governor.

But Spanberger and Jones won the Republican-held offices that they targeted while Coyner lost to Democratic challenger Lindsey Dougherty by a margin of 52.5% to 47.3%, according to voting returns.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/07/carrie-coyner-virginia-republican-loses-reelection-jay-jones