Dazed lawmakers arriving here for their legislative session said they did not know how much longer Northam would be governor or whether Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax would replace him amid the growing tensions between the state’s two top leaders, both Democrats.
“Everybody is shaking their heads, nobody knows what’s going to happen,” said state Sen. Creigh Deeds, a Democrat who ran for governor a decade ago. “It might change in 15 minutes.”
The cascade of events began Monday morning when Northam met first with his Cabinet and then with his staff, some of whom have urged him to quit over questions about a racist photograph that appeared on his medical school yearbook page.
Northam told his Cabinet members that he wanted time to clear his name and would remain in office for now, according to a Democrat familiar with the meeting. And the governor’s chief of staff told other aides that they owed it to Northam to remain with him, at least for the moment, according to second Democrat briefed on the conversation. Still, Northam was bracing for resignations from his Cabinet, which his advisers expected to come before the end of the week.
But a state that prides itself on its decorum was thrown into further chaos when Fairfax emphatically denied a woman’s claim that he had sexually assaulted her in 2004, and indicated that Northam’s allies were plotting against him to keep him from assuming the governor’s post if Northam resigned.
“Does anybody think it’s any coincidence that on the eve of potentially my being elevated that that’s when this uncorroborated smear comes out?” Fairfax told a group of reporters surrounding him in the rotunda of the state Capitol on Monday afternoon, when asked whether Northam was responsible for the accusations becoming public.
Speaking to reporters outside the Capitol on Monday evening, Fairfax adjusted his stance slightly, saying he had “no indication” that Northam himself was behind the publication of the sexual assault allegations but still decrying the “sneaky” tactics that he said were being employed against him. Then Fairfax shifted targets and hinted that Mayor Levar Stoney of Richmond, a would-be rival to the lieutenant governor for the 2021 Democratic nomination for governor, may have played a role — praising the acumen of a reporter who inquired whether Stoney might have been responsible.
Asked if he had any involvement in leaking the claims of assault, which first surfaced Sunday night on a right-wing website, Stoney said, “The insinuation is 100 percent not true, and frankly it’s offensive.”
Addressing the allegations, which The Washington Post also published Monday morning, Fairfax said he only had what he called “a 100 percent consensual” sexual encounter with the woman at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. In a private meeting with Senate Democrats on Monday morning, Fairfax voiced the same categorical denials about the assault claims, according to a lawmaker present for the gathering.
Neither Fairfax nor the Post named the woman. The Post said it was unable to corroborate the woman’s allegations when she presented them, and did not run a story. The Post, however, disputed a statement by Fairfax saying that the newspaper had found inconsistencies and red flags in the woman’s allegation; the newspaper labeled those assertions as incorrect.
The New York Times has reached out to intermediaries for the woman, but they did not immediately comment Monday.
Asked if Northam was behind the story, an adviser to the embattled governor denied any responsibility, saying they did not have the capacity to hatch such scheme when they are barely clinging to power.
On the question of whether he believes the governor should resign, Fairfax noted that he is in “a unique position” and wanted to remain “circumspect” about the matter.
The day’s swirling events left both politicians bruised at a time when Democrats in Virginia were trying to end the crisis and restore calm to their ranks.
Even as Northam dug in, his onetime allies in the state and national Democratic Party intensified their pleas that he quit, angry and embarrassed at the prospect of being saddled with a governor suddenly compromised by his past. Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday renewed her call for him to step down, stating that Northam had “admitted to enough involvement with racial stereotypes that he’s disqualified himself as governor.'’
Northam first came under fire Friday when a photograph was published online showing people dressed in blackface and Ku Klux Klan robes on his 1984 yearbook page from Eastern Virginia Medical School. After initially acknowledging that it was him in the photograph and apologizing, the governor reversed course Saturday and said he was sure it was not him.
But he undermined his chances for survival by also acknowledging that in the same year he had used shoe polish to darken his face for a Michael Jackson costume at a dance party.
The disclosure of the yearbook photo has also shaken Northam’s alma mater. The college’s provost, Richard V. Homan, has hired a law firm to investigate how it was that offensive pictures came to be published in past yearbooks, and has formed community advisory group to examine the campus’ culture.
“We need to get the best information we can as to what happened, how it was able to happen, so we can make sure we don’t allow those circumstances to exist in the future,” said Vincent Rhodes, the school’s chief communications officer.
While Northam told his aides he wanted to act deliberately at an unprecedented moment in the state’s history, his dwindling circle of advisers scrambled to locate the governor’s classmates in an effort to prove he was not one of the men in the now-notorious image.
Northam was flanked by his longtime chief of staff, Clark Mercer, and spokeswoman, Ofirah Yheskel. He also summoned aides from his 2017 campaign, an election that marked the Democrats’ first major victory in the Trump era.
Across Capitol Square on an unusually warm winter day, shellshocked state legislators did not quite know what to say as they navigated around a phalanx of national television crews.
Kirk Cox, the Republican speaker of the House of Delegates who has called on the governor to quit, said he did not want to pursue impeachment against Northam and it was uncertain if the crisis met the threshold for removing him from office.
But the governor, already cast out by Virginia’s political leaders, was fast becoming a pariah outside Richmond, too.
And the fallout began to spread beyond the political realm, as the governor and William & Mary University agreed that he would not attend the formal inauguration of its president Friday. “That behavior has no place in civil society — not 35 years ago, not today,” said Katherine Rowe, president of the university, Virginia’s oldest institution of higher learning.
The day’s chaotic tone was set at 2:55 a.m. Monday, when aides to Fairfax — a Democrat widely seen as a rising star in the party — put out a statement saying the sexual assault allegation was “false” and that Fairfax had “never assaulted anyone — ever — in any way, shape or form.” The aides said Fairfax is considering “appropriate legal action against those attempting to spread this defamatory and false allegation.”
Fairfax’s aides said The Washington Post had investigated the claims around the time of the lieutenant governor’s inauguration last year but did not publish an article.
According to a Post story Monday, the woman contacted the newspaper after Fairfax won election in November 2017 and alleged that he had sexually assaulted her in 2004.
The Post had been unable to corroborate her allegations, which Fairfax had denied at the time, according to the story.
Lawmakers in Richmond insisted that, despite the tumult, they were trying to work as normal. This week is among the most crucial for the General Assembly, because Tuesday is “crossover day,” the moment on the legislative calendar when the two chambers swap their passed bills.
And as sunset neared on the Jefferson-designed Capitol, the House of Delegates was in session, considering a bill about embryos and assisted conception as its members sat quietly in their seats. One was wrapped in a blanket.
“I’m just sort of focusing what we’re working on,” said Alfonso H. Lopez, a Northern Virginia legislator who is the House’s Democratic whip.
But when they stepped away from their desks, the lawmakers could not help but express their fears about the implications of Northam remaining in office.
By Monday evening the governor had spent more than three long nights in deepening political isolation, abandoned by Democrats who quickly came to see his diminished standing as a burden on two fronts: their policy agenda, including matters like teacher pay and tax policy, and their efforts to capture control of the House of Delegates and the Senate this year.
Both chambers are within reach for the party, which has made gains throughout the state in recent years.
“It would be very burdensome for us in this election year to have a governor who’s being protested at every stop,” said Mark Sickles, a Democratic legislator from Northern Virginia.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.