Virginia: Governor says he won’t step down.
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam told his top staff Friday that he is not going to resign over a racist photo that has roiled state politics despite intense pressure to step down, according to a top administration official.
Northam called a Cabinet meeting Friday afternoon to announce his intention to stay, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
The announcement comes at the end of an unprecedented week in Virginia history that has seen the state’s three top Democrats embroiled in potentially career-ending scandals.
The tumult began a week ago, when Northam’s medical school yearbook page surfaced with a picture of one person in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe.
Northam immediately apologized for appearing in the photograph, saying he could not “undo the harm my behavior caused then and today.” Most of the Democratic establishment immediately called for his resignation.
Last Saturday, though, the governor reversed course and said he wasn’t in the picture. He said he wasn’t going to resign immediately because he owed it to the people of Virginia to start a discussion about race and discrimination and listen to the pain he had caused.
“I believe this moment can be the first small step to open a discussion about these difficult issues,” Northam said. But the governor left his longterm plans open, saying he would reassess his decision not to resign if it became clear he had no viable path forward.
Meanwhile, a cascade of scandals involving top politicians has rocked the state. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax was accused of forcing a college professor to perform oral sex on him at a hotel in 2004 during the Democratic National Convention in Boston. On Friday, a second woman came forward to accuse Fairfax of sexual assault when the two were students at Duke University.
Top Democrats, including a number of presidential hopefuls and most of Virginia’s congressional delegation, swiftly and decisively turned against Fairfax, who stands to become the state’s second black governor if Northam quits. Fairfax has denied the allegations.
“Fairfax can no longer fulfill his duties,” the Democratic caucuses of both the state House and Senate said in a joint statement calling on him to resign.
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.”
The Virginia Black Legislative Caucus also joined the growing chorus of calls for Fairfax to depart, saying it couldn’t “see it in the best interest” for him to stay on.
And Attorney General Mark Herring — in line to become governor if Northam and Fairfax resign — admitted putting on blackface in the 1980s, when he was a college student.
If all three Democrats resigned, Republican House Speaker Kirk Cox would become governor.