Jason Miyares — Virginia’s ‘new sheriff’ — has had a busy first week. He’s not done.

On the campaign trail, Jason Miyares promised swift change if elected Virginia’s attorney general. A week into the job, he’s announced several significant changes ― opening an investigation of the state’s parole board, pulling Virginia from a multi-state climate lawsuit and firing more than two dozen employees.

The Virginia Beach Republican and former state delegate also managed to garner national media attention, including an interview Monday with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, in which he declared “there’s a new sheriff in town.”

The changes started Jan. 14 — the day before Miyares took the oath of office — when he notified about 30 employees who’d served under outgoing Attorney General Mark Herring that they were out of a job. About 17 were attorneys and many were not considered political employees.

Just hours after he was sworn in, Miyares announced Saturday he was opening investigations into two incidents he said had greatly disturbed him: the Virginia Parole Board’s decision to release several violent criminals last year without notifying victims’ families, and the controversial handling of a student sex assault case in Loudoun County.

His busy first week continued. On Wednesday, the new attorney general announced Virginia would no longer take part in a pending U.S. Supreme Court case concerning the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions related to climate change. Miyares said in a statement he believed the case could devastate the coal industry and cause thousands of people in Southwest Virginia to lose their jobs.

“Virginia is no longer anti-coal,” he said in his statement.

On Thursday, Miyares announced Virginia would join a coalition of 27 attorneys general from across the country in asking the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to withdraw its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for large employers.

And he’s not done yet. In an interview with The Virginian-Pilot before his swearing in, Miyares said he also plans to seek legislative authority that would allow his office to prosecute cases that local prosecutors fail to pursue in their jurisdictions, or when they offer what he considers an overly lenient plea deal. Del. Rob Bell, a Republican and attorney from Charlottesville, plans to sponsor the legislation, Miyares said.

“Some of them have refused to prosecute certain crimes and, not surprisingly, those crimes tend to go up,” he told The Pilot. “If you’re not going to do your job, fine, I’ll do it for you.”

Miyares said it was too early to say whether he would continue to pursue all the cases started by Herring’s office, including a lawsuit recently filed against the town of Windsor that alleges its police department has operated in a discriminatory way against Black people and repeatedly violated their constitutional rights.

“We will review all the active cases, and if they have merit, we will pursue them,” he said.

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Early life and career

Miyares, 45, is the first Latino attorney general and first Hispanic to win a statewide election in Virginia. He was born in North Carolina and grew up in Virginia Beach. He and his two brothers were raised by their mother, Miriam, who had fled communist Cuba in 1965 when she was just 19. She eventually became an American citizen and made sure her sons knew how blessed they were to grow up in the United States, he said.

Miyares graduated from Salem High School in Virginia Beach. He earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from James Madison University and his law degree from William & Mary Law School.

He and his wife, Page, married in 2004 and have three daughters: Gabriella, 14, Elaina, 13, and Sophia, 10. Page Miyares is the daughter of Virginia Beach’s longtime former treasurer John Atkinson and co-owns Atkinson Realty in Virginia Beach with her mother and brothers.

Miyares first job out of law school was at a private law firm, but he left in 2007 to become a prosecutor with the Virginia Beach Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office. The move meant a pay cut, he said, but he felt it was worth it.

“I learned so much in that job,” Miyares said of his days as a prosecutor. “I was in court every day, working with law enforcement, and I loved it.”

He also enjoyed working with crime victims, and doing all that he could to help them, he said.

Miyares planned to stay with the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office longer, but just two years into the job, he was asked by friend Scott Rigell to serve as campaign manager and advisor in his bid to represent Virginia’s 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The two are members of Galilee Episcopal Church in Virginia Beach, and had become friends through a couples Bible study group that Rigell and his wife hosted at their home. Miyares was still in law school at the time and attended the meetings with Page.

Rigell said he was immediately impressed by Miyares, whom he described as highly intelligent and hard-working. When Miyares learned Rigell was considering a run for office, he encouraged him and offered to help.

“I don’t think he could have been more surprised,” Rigell said of offering Miyares the top role in his campaign. Rigell was elected to Congress in 2010 and continued to serve until 2016, when he decided not to seek another term.

In 2015, Rigell said it was his turn to support Miyares in his bid for elected office. That’s when Miyares had decided to run for Virginia’s House of Delegates.

“He said, ‘I’m thinking about running,’ and asked me what I thought,” Rigell said. “I said, ‘Run Jason, Run.’”

Miyares won, becoming the first Cuban American to be elected to the Virginia General Assembly.

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The run for attorney general

In 2019, Democrats won the majority of seats in the General Assembly and pushed for legislation that would make sweeping changes to criminal justice laws. In the two years Democrats controlled the legislature, lawmakers passed stricter gun laws, ended the state’s use of the death penalty, and sought unsuccessfully to make it easier to sue police officers for wrongdoing.

Efforts like those played a major role in Miyares’ decision to run for attorney general, he said.

“There was a real criminal-first, victim-last mindset in Richmond,” he said. “As a longtime victim’s rights advocate, that really, really bothered me.”

Miyares announced his decision to run in September 2020.

Two events in 2021 made him even more determined to win. The first came in the spring, when the Virginia Parole Board released dozens of inmates, including many who had been convicted of violent crimes, without giving proper notice. Prosecutors and victim’s families hadn’t been allowed to weigh in, or even been notified, in multiple cases, which the law requires.

The other came later that year, when parents accused the Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent of covering up two sexual assaults committed months apart by a teenage student on school grounds.

Both of those incidents became major issues of Miyares’ campaign. And they’re among the ones he believes helped him in his narrow win over Herring last November.

“I don’t see Virginia as a left or right state,” Miyares said. “I think Virginia is a common-sense state. And we ran on a lot of common sense issues and I think that’s why we won.”

Jane Harper, 757-222-5097, jane.harper@pilotonline.com