Calls were mounting for Virginia’s lieutenant governor to resign Saturday, at the tail end of an astonishing week that saw the state’s top three elected officials — all Democrats — embr…
RICHMOND, Va. — Calls were mounting for Virginia’s lieutenant governor to resign Saturday, at the tail end of an astonishing week that saw the state’s top three elected officials — all Democrats — embroiled in potentially career-ending scandals fraught with questions of race, sex, and power.
Two women have accused Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault, and he has emphatically denied both allegations. After the second allegation was made Friday, Fairfax — who stands to become the state’s second black governor if Gov. Ralph Northam resigns over a racist photo — was barraged with demands to step down from top Democrats, including a number of presidential hopefuls and most of Virginia’s congressional delegation.
Northam, now a year into his four-year term, announced his intention to stay at a Friday afternoon Cabinet meeting, 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 surfaced and he acknowledged wearing blackface in the 1980s.
On Saturday, Northam made his first official public appearance since he denied being in the photo. He attended the funeral for a state trooper killed in a shootout. He made no public comments upon arriving in Chilhowie, four hours west of the tumult in Richmond, and wasn’t listed as a speaker in the funeral program.
Moments after Northam’s Friday meeting with his Cabinet, a second woman went public with accusations against Fairfax. A lawyer for Meredith Watson, 39, said in a statement that Fairfax raped Watson 19 years ago while they were students at Duke University.
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.
