Scandals drive calls for top Virginia leaders to resign
Lt. gov. hit with second sexual assault allegation
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.
U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine called the allegations against the lieutenant governor “atrocious” and added, “He can no longer effectively serve the Commonwealth.”
The developments came near the end of an astonishing week that saw all three of Virginia’s top elected officials — all Democrats — embroiled in potentially careerending scandals fraught with questions of race, sex and power.
Northam, now a year into his four-year term, announced his intention to stay at an afternoon Cabinet meeting, according to a senior official.
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.
Moments after Northam told his Cabinet he was staying put, a second woman went public with accusations that Fairfax raped her 19 years ago while they were students at Duke University. A lawyer for Meredith Watson, 39, said in a statement that Fairfax attacked Watson in 2000.
The statement said it was a “premeditated and aggressive” assault and that while Watson and Fairfax had been social friends, they were never involved romantically.
The lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, said her team had statements from ex-classmates who said Watson “immediately” told friends Fairfax raped her. A public relations firm representing Watson provided The Associated Press with a 2016 email exchange with a female friend and 2017 text exchanges in which Watson said Fairfax had raped her.
Watson’s representatives declined to provide further documentation and said their client would not talk to journalists.
Fairfax emphatically denied the new allegation, as he did the first leveled earlier 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. “I will not resign.”
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 on the 2000 allegation.
Many Democrats who had carefully withheld judgment after the first accusation against Fairfax, saying the matter needed to be investigated, immediately condemned him. A cascade of calls for Fairfax to resign began Friday evening.