More turmoil in Va.
Another sexual assault accusation hits Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax as the state’s governor, Ralph Northam, faces continued calls to resign.
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 Virginia’s second black governor if Northam quits.
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 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.
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 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.
Many Democrats who had carefully withheld judgment after the first accusation against Fairfax, saying the matter needed to be investigated, immediately condemned him.
Top Democrats running for president in 2020 called for Fairfax’s resignation, including Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Booker cited “multiple detailed allegations” that he found “deeply troubling.” Gillibrand called the details “sickening and horrendous.”
And several members of the state’s congressional delegation, black and white, also said Fairfax can no longer serve in office.
A Democratic member of the state House, Del. Patrick Hope, said he intends to introduce articles of impeachment against Fairfax on Monday if he hasn’t resigned by then.