Gov. Ralph Northam, accompanied by his wife, Pamela, addresses news reporters at the Executive Mansion in response to the discovery of a racist photo on his medical school yearbook page. (Photo by Sarah King)
Editor's note: This story has been updated since its original publication.
The Virginia State Capitol was eerily quiet on Saturday morning. Reporters were beginning to flock to the site of the Executive Mansion by 9 a.m., having caught wind of protests calling for Gov. Ralph Northam’s resignation in the wake of the release of a photo on his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook page depicting a figure wearing blackface beside another dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes.
Big League Politics, a national conservative media website, obtained the image and posted it online Friday afternoon with accompanying text stating “Northam and a friend were photographed together — one in blackface, one in Klan robes.” This was quickly followed by a viral circulation of local, national and international news stories about the governor, who did not issue a statement about the photograph until several hours later.
“Earlier today, a website published a photograph of me from my 1984 medical school yearbook in a costume that is clearly racist and offensive,” Northam’s statement read. “I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now.” The governor’s statement went on to say the behavior is not “in keeping with who I am today and the values I have fought for throughout my career in the military, in medicine, and in public service.” He ended by saying,“I recognize that it will take time and serious effort to heal the damage this conduct has caused. I am ready to do that important work. The first step is to offer my sincerest apology and to state my absolute commitment to living up to the expectations Virginians set for me when they elected me to be their governor.”
But the political damage was done. In short order, the Virginia Black Legislative Caucus issued a statement calling for Northam’s resignation, and similar statements appeared from Northam’s predecessor, Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic Party of Virginia, House and Senate Democratic caucuses, the Republican Party of Virginia, House Republican leaders and elected officials including Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney and Democratic Reps. A. Donald McEachin and Abigail Spanberger.
Many of them reiterated their call for Northam’s resignation after he held a news conference Saturday afternoon in which he said he was not ready to resign and that, contrary to his earlier statement, that he is not one of the two costumed figures in the yearbook photo. Northam said he had not purchased a yearbook and had not seen the picture in question until his staff showed it to him on Friday. He acknowledged that it may be “hard to believe,” but said that after closely examining the photo and calling old classmates, he determined he was not one of the two figures in the photograph, adding that he would have remembered such an incident, and that he would never stand next to someone dressed as a Klansman. He said he was not surprised to see a photo of this kind in the yearbook, noting different attitudes and culture at the time. (The Richmond Times-Dispatch has since published a story showing additional blackface pictures in the EVMS yearbook.)
Northam did, however, admit to another incident in his past that transpired the same year, in 1984. In San Antonio, Northam said, he participated in a talent show dance contest — which he won — and performed a Michael Jackson song while wearing the signature shoes and glove, as well as darkening his face. When reporters pressed him on what he meant by darkening his face, Northam explained that he swiped a little bit of shoe polish across each cheek.
The explanation was met with rapid-firing questioning from reporters — including whether Northam could still do the moonwalk.
Gov. Ralph Northam talks to reporters at Saturday's news conference. (Photo by Sarah King)
"I am not ready to ask Virginians to grant me forgiveness for my past actions," Northam said. "Right now I am simply asking for the opportunity to demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the person I was is not the man I am today."
The yearbook photo was released on the heels of a controversial week for Northam, who became the subject of President Donald Trump’s tweeting on Thursday after supporting the loosening of restrictions on third-trimester abortions — an issue advocated for by NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia — and receiving backlash from conservatives across the country, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who claimed that Northam endorsed “infanticide.” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tweeted: "Dem Gov. Ralph Northam, a pediatrician himself, is defending born-alive abortions.” Northam said his comments had been mischaracterized.
In a statement Friday, NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia Executive Director Tarina Keene said she has known Northam personally for a dozen years, and during that time has known him to be humble, honest and a dedicated physician and public servant, Even so, the organization strongly urged Northam to resign.
“The Commonwealth of Virginia has a long history of bigotry and racism. And in 2019, there is absolutely no place for racism in Virginia,” Keene says in the statement. "The message this photograph sends is in direct conflict with the values that NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia fights for every day: equality and freedom for all people.”
The governor’s decision Saturday not to resign seemed to surprise some of his fellow Democrats. Afterward, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring released a statement saying, “It is no longer possible for Governor Northam to lead our Commonwealth and it is time for him to step down.” Herring said he had spoken with Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax “and assured him that, should he ascend to the governorship, he will have my complete support and commitment to ensuring his success and the success of our Commonwealth.”
While he stopped short of calling for Northam to resign, Fairfax released a statement Saturday saying, "I cannot condone the actions from his past that, at the very least, suggest a comfort with Virginia's darker history of white supremacy, racial stereotyping and intimidation."
Later Saturday, Virginia’s U.S. Senators, Democrats Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, along with U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-3rd District, also called for Northam to resign. Stoney tweeted, "I have not changed my position. The Governor didn’t put anything behind us by creating even more confusion, anger and disbelief." Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder repeated an earlier statement that the decision is Northam's to make, but added, "It is difficult for anyone who watched the press conference today to conclude that he has any other choice ... but to resign."
President Trump tweeted that Northam's statement that he was not in the photo came "24 hours after apologizing for appearing in the picture and after making the most horrible statement on 'super' late term abortion. Unforgiveable!" He followed that tweet with another, saying "Ed Gillespie, who ran for Governor of the Great State of Virginia against Ralph Northam, must now be thinking Malpractice and Dereliction of Duty with regard to his Opposition Research Staff. If they find that terrible picture before the election, he wins by 20 points!"
University of Virginia law professor A.E. Dick Howard, who served as executive director of the Virginia commission that wrote the state’s current constitution, says that if Northam would decide to resign and Justin Fairfax became governor, Fairfax would have the power to select his replacement as lieutenant governor until the next statewide election in 2021. After filling out the remainder of Northam’s term, Fairfax would be eligible to run for governor, Howard says.
Asked whether the legislature could remove Northam from office, given his decision not to resign, Howard says, “There’s no occasion when it’s actually been done.” He points to a constitutional provision for removal of office, similar to the 25th amendment in the U.S. Constitution, if the governor is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” It would take an action by the attorney general, speaker of the House of Delegates and president pro tempore of the Senate, or a majority of the General Assembly members.
“It’s clearly there to deal with disability, physical or mental,” Howard says. “It would really stretch the provision to suppose that it might be used to argue that if the governor’s critics think he’s misbehaved, that makes him unable to carry out the duties of his office.”
The state’s constitution also includes a provision for impeachment in the case of “malfeasance in office, corruption, neglect of duty, or other high crime or misdemeanor.”
But, says Howard, “No governor has ever been removed by way of impeachment.” Whatever people may think of Northam’s behavior in 1984, he says, “it was not done in the course of his official duties. No matter how you define it, it has to happen in office. It can’t be something he did as a private citizen years ago.”
Publication of the photo on Friday afternoon caught Democratic leadership off-guard, with one senior Democratic Party of Virginia official saying before Saturday's news conference, “There's a huge information vacuum right now.” Standing outside the governor’s mansion Saturday morning with a clergy member, Jim Holland, the only Democrat on the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors, said, “I had no knowledge this was there and certainly I regret this happened. It's wrong, it’s offensive regardless of any group, for all Americans, all races, it is so clearly out of bounds and wrong.”
Holland said he had not spoken with Northam that morning, but added, “I imagine he’s with his pastor right now,” referring to the Rev. Kelvin Jones, pastor of First Baptist Church Capeville, the Eastern Shore church Northam attends. The two became friends while Northam was in the state Senate, and he began attending the church. At a Martin Luther King Day celebration this year, Northam spoke at the church in honor of the civil rights icon.
Conservatives — who initially tried to court Northam for the Republican Party before U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine recruited him for the Democrats — seemed a little less shell-shocked by the yearbook revelation than their political counterparts.
“My read on this is the Republicans see this as an opportunity for a little bit of revenge,” says Brian Landrum, a veteran Republican political operative who recently worked on campaigns for U.S. Senate nominee Corey Stewart and former 7th District Rep. Dave Brat's 2014 victory.
“As you recall back in 2017, Ralph Northam ran a series of ads against the Republican nominee Ed Gillespie, essentially accusing him and Republicans of being racist. Well, you fast forward two years and the shoe’s on the other foot.”” Landrum was referring to an ad showing a pickup truck with a Confederate flag and Gillespie bumper sticker chasing down brown-skinned children. Northam's ad followed one from Gillespie's campaign trying to tie the Democrat to immigration policies the ad claimed will lead to more MS-13 gang violence.
Noel Fritsch, a conservative political consultant who works for Big League Politics, would not say how the outlet obtained the photo, which he said the organization “independently verified.”
The yearbook photo is not the only news broken recently by the outlet, Fritsch added. “I think we were the first ones to report [Northam’s] like $2 million donation from Planned Parenthood, and that’s just in the last week,” he said.
Fritsch said he did not want to go into how his news organization is funded. The Big League Politics team was founded in 2017, he said, by Patrick Howley — a former Breitbart reporter who was the “lead Hillary Clinton reporter” during the 2016 election, and was formerly with the Daily Caller and Washington Free Beacon — all conservative-leaning outlets. In early 2018, Big League Politics was acquired by Mustard Seed Media, a company run by a political consultant who previously worked for Republican Roy Moore’s 2017 Alabama Senate campaign. Moore, a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, faced sexual misconduct allegations from nine women. He in turn filed a lawsuit against several of the women, claiming a political conspiracy to defame him and ruin his campaign. In February 2018, the @MooreSenate Twitter account belonging to Moore’s campaign was transferred to BLP.
Reilly O’Neal, who runs Mustard Seed Media, confirmed to the Daily Beast in 2018 that his company now owns BLP, although he declined to provide details about how BLP came into possession of the Moore campaign Twitter account. According to Federal Election Commission records, Moore’s campaign paid two of O’Neal’s companies more than $730,000 and another $130,000 to Fritsch, then a consultant, a firm Fritsch runs and another firm that lists his D.C. address.
“I can give you this,” Fritsch said via phone on Saturday morning. “Big League Politics was told by sources high up in the [national] Republican Party that [Virginia House Speaker] Kirk Cox’s office and specifically his chief of staff was extremely upset at the Republican Party of Virginia for pushing the Northam yearbook photo narrative — and the only logical conclusion of that is Kirk Cox very much liked working with Northam.”
Reached by phone Saturday evening, Matthew Moran, Cox's chief of staff, declined to comment beyond a statement released by House Republican leaders earlier in the day saying, "While we respect the governor's lifetime of service, his ability to lead and govern is permanently impaired and the interests of the Commonwealth necessitate his resignation."
John Findlay, executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia, called Fritsch's statement regarding Cox and the state GOP false, adding, "The idea that Kirk Cox and Ralph Northam are working together is utter lunacy."
Landrum noted that the Gillespie campaign, which he says he worked on in an informal capacity as an advisor, was the first Republican campaign in Virginia to have a budget for opposition research in the last five or 10 years.
“Because Republicans have not had access to opposition research firms -- they don’t have the money to do it, and the Democrats do,” Landrum said. “So I think a lot of the reason something like this didn’t come out prior like in 2017 is because even the ones who are digging into the background of the candidates they’re competing against there’s not a lot of creativity — for a scoop like this to be broken for an outfit like Big League, which really prides itself on investigative creativity, I think it really speaks more about the ability of an organization to pursue potential scoops — they might not yield fruit, but in this case it did.”
Republican leaders did immediately jump on the opportunity — or, as Landrum put it, “blood in the water.”
"Racism has no place in Virginia," Republican Party of Virginia Chairman Jack Wilson said in a statement Friday. "These pictures are wholly inappropriate. If Gov. Northam appeared in blackface or dressed in a KKK robe, he should resign immediately."
The call for resignation was echoed by political newcomers, too, such as Republican 5th District Rep. Denver Riggleman, who tweeted the governor’s apology was “hollow.”
Earlier in the day, activists gathered outside the governor’s mansion to similarly call for Northam’s removal from office.
“Karma is real — welcome to our world, Gov. Northam,” indigenous community organizer Vanessa Bolin told a group of reporters. Behind her were other protestors holding signs calling for Northam’s resignation and replacement by Fairfax.
Vanessa Bolin speaks during a protest Saturday morning outside the Executive Mansion. (Photo by Sarah King)
“The photo of him in blackface or KKK hood were released on the first day of black history month in 2019 — the 400th year since Africans were human-trafficked to Turtle Island,” Bolin said. She also pointed to the fact Northam voted for George W. Bush “not once, but twice,” and his perceived leniency toward Dominion Energy and the Virginia State Air Control Board concerning a proposal to build a compressor station in a historically black community in Buckingham County.
“This is about racial and ethical reconciliation; this is why Northam's resignation as governor of the so-called commonwealth of Virginia is so significant,” Bolin said. “We will welcome Justin Fairfax as the new governor of this so-called commonwealth; we thank him for not accepting money from corporate influencers like Dominion Energy and speaking out about the Mountain Valley and [Atlantic Coast Pipeline] during his campaign for lieutenant governor.”
Others, such as Chesterfield Supervisor Holland, asked for time to take a hard look at Northam’s character, and the facts.
“He's apologized for it; he's indicated he wants to atone for it — to amend for it,” Holland said Saturday morning, “and I think he deserves that opportunity to do so. As I said earlier, I'm a Christian first and an elected official second — and the Christianity that governs my life, as a Christian, we are obligated to forgive those who ask for forgiveness."
