Virginia presents the first high-stakes trial of Democrats’ zero-tolerance policy for racism and sexism, and a look at how Republicans may weaponize those politics.
Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.
Virginia men are giving Florida Man a run for his money this week.
First, Gov. Ralph Northam said he once wore blackface to dress as Michael Jackson for a dance contest, after admitting — and then denying — he posed for a racist photo in his medical school yearbook.
A few days later, Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax, who would take over as governor if Mr. Northam resigned, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2004. He’s denied the charge, and has hired the law firm that represented Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
And on Wednesday, Attorney General Mark R. Herring, third in the line of succession and an expected candidate for governor in 2021, admitted that he, too, wore blackface at a college party in the 1980s. After a tearful meeting with black lawmakers yesterday, he suggested he could resign.
If the three men, all Democrats, were to step down, next in line for the governorship would be a Republican — Kirk Cox, speaker of the House of Delegates, who got the job because his name was picked from this ceramic bowl. (Seriously.)
The controveries are a disaster for Democrats, and for Virginia, a state that has struggled with its legacy as the birthplace of American slavery.
But they may also foreshadow how some of the country’s raw and polarized dynamics around gender and race could play out in the 2020 election:
• For Democrats, it’s the party’s first high-stakes test of their new, zero-tolerance politics when it comes to racism and sexism — a brand the party has embraced in response to President Trump’s demagogy on race and misogynistic attacks.
• For Republicans, it illustrates how they can weaponize those politics against their opposition.
Republicans, it should be noted, haven’t escaped this crisis completely: It was revealed today that Thomas K. Norment Jr., the Republican majority leader in the Virginia Senate, helped oversee a yearbook that featured racist photographs and slurs. But unlike the Democrats, Mr. Norment is not high enough in the line of succession to change the balance of power in the state.
While national Democrats greeted Mr. Northam’s admission with quick and near-universal condemnation, they’ve been notably more reserved when it comes to Mr. Fairfax or Mr. Herring resigning.
By the standards set by their own party over the past few years, all three men could easily be pushed out of office.
But Virginia Democrats face no easy choices. If the men all step down, they hand the leadership of a key battleground state to Republicans. If the men stay in office, they enter the 2019 elections severely hampered in their ability to mobilize the coalition of women and black voters they need to win in the state.
