Northam, who apologized Friday night, was increasingly isolated, but in phone calls Saturday morning he said he had no recollection of the yearbook image of two men, one in blackface and the other in Ku Klux Klan robes. Late Saturday morning, his office announced that he would provide a statement to the news media at 2:30 p.m.
In addition to calling state Democratic officials, Northam has been 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.
With the governor and his top advisers gathered in Richmond, a Democrat familiar with Northam’s calls said the governor was determined to prove it was not him in the photograph. The governor, this Democrat said, wanted to take responsibility Friday night, which was why he apologized for appearing in the picture without acknowledging which person he was in the image.
Rep. Robert C. Scott of Virginia, the senior member of the state’s congressional delegation and a long-serving African-American Democrat, said Saturday morning that he wanted to hear Northam’s statement.
“The facts were fairly straightforward last night,” said Scott, who stopped just short on Friday of calling on the governor to resign. “So let’s see if there are any new facts.”
But most Virginia Democratic leaders said privately that he would still have little choice but to quit because he had lost support from nearly all his allies in the state Capitol. On Friday, the state Legislative Black Caucus and both the House and Senate Democratic caucuses called on him to step down.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.