Democratic strategist James Carville said on his Politics War Room podcast that he could “find a convicted pedophile and run him” just to see if such a candidate could beat a Republican — remarks delivered as Democrats touted Tuesday’s election gains and as he discussed Virginia Attorney General‑elect Jay Jones’ win despite a late-campaign texting scandal.
James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist known for the 1992 Clinton-campaign mantra “It’s the economy, stupid,” used his Politics War Room podcast this week to crack an off‑color joke about testing whether even a “convicted pedophile” could defeat a GOP candidate. “I’m personally going to find a convicted pedophile and run him in a race just to see if he could beat a Republican,” Carville said in a clip circulated on X; he added he was “not going to say that a convicted pedophile could win.” The comments were highlighted by the Daily Wire from a podcast segment posted Wednesday. (en.wikipedia.org)
Carville then pivoted to Virginia, where Democrat Jay Jones was elected attorney general on Nov. 4, defeating Republican incumbent Jason Miyares after apologizing for widely condemned 2022 text messages about then–House Speaker Todd Gilbert. Carville called Miyares’ effort “a pretty good campaign” and noted the GOP ran ads pressing the text‑message issue — an argument echoed by a Miyares spot asking, “Can you trust Jay Jones to protect your children?” (dailywire.com)
Labeling the Virginia outcome “the most interesting piece of news of the cycle, even more interesting than Bucks County,” Carville also asserted that the Republican legislator who shared the screenshots of Jones’s messages lost her own race. Delegate Carrie Coyner — the Republican who confirmed receiving the 2022 messages and whose screenshots were circulated publicly — was defeated Tuesday by Democrat Lindsey Dougherty in House District 75, according to local outlets. (dailywire.com)
Jones’s texts, first reported publicly in early October, included violent rhetoric about Gilbert; Jones apologized and said he took full responsibility. The episode drew sharp bipartisan criticism and dominated the closing stretch of the campaign before Jones nevertheless won statewide. (politico.com)
Carville closed the segment by warning Republicans about “baggage” tied to former President Donald Trump — a theme Democrats emphasized across several contests they won on Tuesday. (dailywire.com)
His podcast quip follows another recent controversy: in an October episode, Carville said that after Trump leaves office he wanted corporate and academic “collaborators” publicly shamed — “heads shaven,” “put in orange pajamas,” and “marched down Pennsylvania Avenue” — comments that prompted criticism across the political spectrum. (mediaite.com)
