Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring are still trying to regain their political standing after awkwardly acknowledging that they each once wore blackface as young men in the 1980s . Calls for Northam’s resignation raised the prospect of Fairfax taking over, which prompted his accusers to come forward.
All three scandals involve events that happened long before these leaders took office, but they’ve become a full-blown crisis for Democrats. The party counts on the support of black voters and has taken an almost zero-tolerance approach to sexual misconduct in the #MeToo era. A housecleaning could be costly: If all three resign, Republican state House Speaker Kirk Cox would become Virginia’s governor.
In an interview broadcast Monday, Northam provided a more complete explanation of his statements that set off this whole crisis following the discovery of a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook. Northam initially said he was in the photo of a person wearing blackface next to another person in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe; then he denied it, while saying he did wear blackface to a dance party that same year.
