RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – With Virginia’s top three elected officials engulfed in scandal, fellow Democrats were rendered practically speechless, uncertain of how to thread their way…
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – With Virginia’s top three elected officials engulfed in scandal, fellow Democrats were rendered practically speechless, uncertain of how to thread their way through the racial and sexual allegations and the tangled political implications.
Gov. Ralph Northam’s career was already teetering over a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook when the crisis spiraled out of control. First, the state’s attorney general acknowledged Wednesday that he, too, wore blackface once, when he was a college student. And then a woman publicly accused the lieutenant governor of sexually assaulting her 15 years ago.
Everyone in Richmond, it seemed, was waiting Thursday for Virginia’s Legislative Black Caucus to respond. The caucus has been calling for Northam’s resignation over the past week but was silent about the latest developments.
“We’ve got a lot to digest,” the group’s chairman, Del. Lamont Bagby, said Wednesday.
The crisis threatens to bring down all three of the politicians, all of them Democrats. If Northam resigns, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax stands to become Virginia’s second black governor. Herring is next in the line of succession, followed by House Speaker Kirk Cox, a conservative Republican.
Herring, who had been urging Northam to step down and was planning to run for governor in 2021, issued a statement acknowledging he wore brown makeup and a wig in 1980 to look like a rapper during a party when he was a 19-year-old student at the University of Virginia.
