“It was definitely not me,” Northam, a Democrat, told reporters at a news conference in the governor’s mansion. “I can tell by looking at it.”
Pressed on why he initially apologized, Northam said he had wanted to “take credit for recognizing that this was a horrific photo that was on my page with my name on it.”
The governor called the images, which first surfaced Friday afternoon, “offensive, racist and despicable.” But he said that “I cannot in good conscience choose the path that would be easier for me to duck the responsibility to reconcile.”
But he may have made his effort to remain in office more difficult by revealing that he had darkened his face with shoe polish for a Michael Jackson costume in a dance contest in Texas in 1984, when he was a young Army officer.
“I look back now and regret that I did not understand the harmful legacy of an action like that,” he said.
Virginia’s Legislative Black Caucus did not wait for the news conference to end before issuing a statement reaffirming its call for the governor to quit. Noting that Northam had initially said Friday that he was in the photograph, the group of legislators, who are all Democrats, said: “The damage that has been done by these revelations is irreparable.”
Others soon followed with similar reactions. The Virginia Democratic Party said it stood by its call earlier Saturday for Northam to resign. And the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, also urged the governor to step aside.
Northam, 59, who was elected in 2017, asked Virginians for forgiveness and said he understood not all of the state’s citizens would believe him.
The governor’s refusal to resign plunged Virginia into political turmoil and created a crisis for national Democrats, who have assailed President Donald Trump for his demagoguery on racial issues and will not abide a prominent party member who is associated with emblems of bigotry.
Democrats in the Trump era have adopted a sort of zero-tolerance approach in their own ranks toward misconduct involving race and gender. With Republicans eager to level accusations of hypocrisy, Democratic leaders in Washington have sought to aggressively police the sort of misdeeds they have linked to Trump. They have pushed out lawmakers such as former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken and former Rep. Ruben Kihuen of Nevada, both of whom were accused of sexual harassment.
With the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race getting underway, the pressure on Northam has been intense: The party’s White House hopefuls were some of the first officials to call on him to resign Friday night, beginning a cascade of demands that extended through Saturday morning when other potential Democratic candidates, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, urged the governor to step down.
By the time he strode to a podium in the governor’s mansion, with portraits of Virginia’s founding fathers behind each shoulder, Northam was increasingly isolated. In phone calls Saturday morning, he said he had no recollection of the yearbook images.
In addition to calling state Democratic officials, Northam started calling former classmates at Eastern Virginia Medical School in an effort to determine more information about the picture — and to survive a crisis that is threatening his year-old governorship, according to a Democrat familiar with Northam’s calls. This Democrat said the governor was determined to prove it was not him in the photograph and was even considering using facial recognition software.
At his news conference Saturday, Northam said that he had had a chance to sit down Friday night and look at the photo closely. He said he had also consulted with his family and friends, including a classmate who said that there were photo mix-ups on other pages in the yearbook. He said Saturday that he had not bought the yearbook and had never seen it.
But most state leaders said privately that Northam’s initial acknowledgment that he was in the photo made it all but impossible for him to remain in office because he had lost support from nearly all his allies in the state Capitol.
Other calls for Northam’s resignation had come from former Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Mayor Levar Stoney of Richmond, both longtime allies of the governor, who spoke with him by phone before issuing their statements.
The furor also resonated nationally with top party leaders. With African-American voters a crucial constituency for Democrats, many of the announced and likely 2020 presidential candidates called for Northam’s exit. On Friday, they included Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.
By Saturday, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Vice President Joe Biden, both weighing candidacies, had added their voices, as did Pelosi, who said the photo was “racist and contrary to fundamental American values.” She urged Northam on Saturday to “do the right thing” so Virginians could “heal and move forward.”
Northam’s overnight political implosion began when the conservative website Big League Politics published a photograph from his Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook page from 1984, showing two people, one in blackface and the other in white Ku Klux Klan robes. The governor, in issuing his apology, admitted that he was in the photo but did not say which costume he had worn and offered his “absolute commitment to living up to the expectations Virginians set for me when they elected me to be their governor.”
On Saturday, he firmly denied it was him in the photo.
Later Friday, another damaging report surfaced of an earlier yearbook that listed the nickname “Coonman,” a racial slur, for Northam as an undergraduate.
The yearbook picture, the uproar it created and the governor’s refusal to resign have thrown a state known for its collegial politics into turmoil less than two years after the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
A low-key pediatric neurologist who entered politics only when he was elected to the state Senate in 2007, Northam had enjoyed high approval ratings thanks in part to the state’s booming economy and a handful of initial achievements.
After Democratic gains in the Virginia House, he was able to push through Medicaid expansion last year with bipartisan support. And late last year, he announced one of the most significant economic development achievements in recent Virginia history when Amazon announced it was adding a new headquarters in Arlington.
If he steps down, Northam would be the first Virginia governor to resign since at least the Civil War. Under the Virginia Constitution, Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax, a Democrat and the second black person to be elected to statewide office in Virginia, would assume the governorship.
The Virginia Constitution allows the impeachments of governors for “offending against the Commonwealth by malfeasance in office, corruption, neglect of duty or other high crime or misdemeanor.” If Northam chooses to remain in office and legislators ultimately seek his impeachment, the House of Delegates would be the first legislative chamber to consider the matter. The Senate would conduct any subsequent trial and determine whether Northam kept power.
Northam was at the center of a separate political firestorm even before the yearbook photograph surfaced Friday.
On Wednesday, with Virginia embroiled in a renewed debate over abortion rights, Northam gave an interview to a Washington radio station and was asked about a proposal concerning late-term abortions. Northam said such abortions would be allowed in certain instances, such as cases of severe deformities or nonviable fetuses.
“The infant would be delivered; the infant would be kept comfortable; the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and family desired; and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother,” he said.
The backlash was swift, and some Republicans argued that Northam had effectively thrown his weight behind infanticide. The governor and his allies sharply disputed those assertions.
The yearbook photo controversy was the latest agony over race to befall Virginia, a state that 30 years ago made L. Douglas Wilder the United States’ first elected black governor, but continues to struggle to move beyond its history of slavery and a 20th-century embrace of segregation.
Fairfax stepped off the rostrum of the state Senate last month to protest lawmakers honoring Robert E. Lee. While running for governor, Northam learned his ancestors had been slave owners. “My family’s complicated story is similar to Virginia’s complex history,” he told The Richmond Times-Dispatch.
And in 2017, white supremacists carrying torches marched in Charlottesville, prompting Trump to say there were “fine people” on both sides.
The state’s increasing diversity, including an influx of suburban professionals into population centers outside Washington and Richmond, has moved Virginia from a conservative state to a reliably Democratic one in statewide elections: Republicans have not won a statewide election here this decade.
It was the only Southern state to choose Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016. A Democratic wave in state elections the following year, a rebuke of Trump, delivered to the state Capitol the first Latina lawmakers and the first openly lesbian and transgender members.
Democrats weighing Northam’s fate are certainly mindful that they need to win two seats in each chamber of the Legislature in elections this year to gain majority control. At stake: control over redistricting congressional and legislative seats after the 2020 census.
The views of black officials and voters in particular are crucial: Northam won the 2017 primary thanks in large to part to his advantage with African-Americans, and he also enjoyed strong black support in the general election.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.