“Good evening — I wanted to make sure you saw the latest E.W. Jackson comments from earlier today,” Bauman wrote. What followed was a blog item from the Times-Dispatch newspaper reporting that Jackson said “divine intervention” was needed to bring Democrats and Republicans together to reach an agreement to end the government shutdown…

In a tweet of the article, Virginia Democratic Party communications director mocked Jackson’s comment: “That’s… original RT @MSchmidtRTD: @JacksonForLG calls for “divine intervention” to end budget stand-off http://bit.ly/1hoj6Wn #vagov.”

A spokesperson for the Virginia Democratic Party did not immediately responded to a BuzzFeed inquiry about why they appeared to consider Jackson’s comments controversial.