Virginia governor pledges racial healing

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia’s governor on Saturday pledged to work at healing the state’s racial divide, even as calls mounted for the lieutenant governor to resign — capping an astonishing week that saw all three of the state’s top elected officials embroiled in potentially career-ending scandals.

Two women have accused Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault, and he has emphatically denied both allegations. After the second allegation was made on Friday, Fairfax — who stands to become the state’s second black governor if Gov. Ralph Northam resigns over a racist photo — was barraged by top Democrats with demands to step down, including a number of presidential hopefuls and most of Virginia’s congressional delegation.

Last week, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring acknowledged wearing blackface at a college party in 1980.

Meanwhile, Northam — now a year into his four-year term — announced his intention to stay at a Cabinet meeting on Friday afternoon, 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 page surfaced and he acknowledged wearing blackface in the 1980s.

In his first interview since the scandal erupted, a chastened Northam told The Washington Post on Saturday that the uproar has pushed him to confront the state’s deep and lingering divisions over race, as well as his own insensitivity. But he said that reflection has convinced him that, by remaining in office, he can work to resolve them.

“It’s obvious from what happened this week that we still have a lot of work to do,” Northam said in the interview, conducted at the governor’s mansion. “There are still some very deep wounds in Virginia, and especially in the area of equity.”

Northam said he planned to work for the rest of his term to address issues stemming from inequality, including improving access to health care, housing, and

transportation. He also repeated his contention that he is not the one pictured on his yearbook page in blackface. But he could not explain how it wound up there, or why he had taken responsibility for it.

“I overreacted,” he said. “If I had it to do over again, I would step back and take a deep breath.”

On Saturday, Northam made his first official public appearance since he denied being in the photo, attending the funeral for a state trooper killed in a shootout. But he made no public comments upon arriving in Chilhowie, four hours west of the tumult in Richmond.

Moments after Northam’s Cabinet meeting on Friday, a second woman went