Embattled Virginia gov plans to keep job
BY ALAN SUDERMAN
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia’s state government seemed to come unglued Friday as an embattled Gov. Ralph Northam made it clear he won’t resign and the man in line to succeed him was hit with another sexual assault accusation and barraged with demands that he step down, too.
Top Democrats, including a number of presidential hopefuls and most of Virginia’s congressional delegation, swiftly and decisively turned against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who stands to become the state’s second black governor if Northam quits.
“Fairfax “can no longer fulfill his duties,” the Democratic caucuses of both the state House and Senate said in a statement late Friday.
The twin developments came at the end of an astonishing week that saw all three of Virginia’s top elected officials — all Democrats — embroiled in potentially career-ending scandals fraught with questions of race, sex and power.
Northam, who is a year into his four-year term, announced his intention to stay during an afternoon Cabinet meeting, according to a senior official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
In so doing, Northam defied practically the entire Democratic Party, which rose up against him after a racist photo on his 1984 medical school yearbook surfaced and he acknowledged wearing blackface in the 1980s.
Later in the day, the governor issued a statement to government employees, saying, “You have placed your trust in me to lead Virginia forward — and I plan to do that.” In a sign that he intended to return to business as usual, he also announced more than a dozen appointments to state boards.
Meanwhile, a woman came forward with a statement accusing Fairfax of attacking her when they were students at Duke University in North Carolina in 2000. The Associated Press is not reporting the details because the allegation has not been corroborated.
Fairfax emphatically denied the new allegation, as he did the first one, leveled earlier this week by Vanessa Tyson, a California college professor who said Fairfax forced her to perform oral sex on him at a Boston hotel in 2004.
“It is obvious that a vicious and coordinated smear campaign is being orchestrated against me,” Fairfax said.
Duke campus police have no criminal reports naming Fairfax, university spokesman Michael Schoenfeld said. Durham police spokesman Wil Glenn also said he couldn’t find a report in the department’s system.
Many Democrats who had carefully withheld judgment after the first accusation against Fairfax, saying the matter needed to be investigated, immediately condemned him.