In an interview with “CBS This Morning,” Northam said he was “not going anywhere” and instead would work as governor to “take action with policy to address” inequities in Virginia.
Asked about his two besieged colleagues — Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who is facing accusations of sexual assault, and Attorney General Mark Herring, who admitted to wearing blackface as a college student in the 1980s — Northam said that they “have all grown” over the past week, and that the decisions on whether to resign would have to be made by the men themselves.
The governor endorsed Fairfax’s proposal, made in a statement released Saturday night, to have the FBI investigate the sexual assault charges. “I really think where we are now, we need to get to the truth,” he said.
In the interview, he also said he was dedicated to continuing the work of racial progress, pointing out that the state is 400 years from the moment “the first indentured servants from Africa” landed in Virginia.
At which the interviewer, Gayle King, chimed in: “Also known as slavery.”
It has been more than a week since a photograph showing men in blackface and a Ku Klux Klan outfit on Northam’s medical school yearbook page came to light.
The governor, who initially apologized for appearing in the photo and appeared to be on the verge of resigning, has since insisted it is not him in the picture. A Washington Post-Schar School poll released Saturday showed that Virginians are evenly split on the question of whether the governor should resign. That same poll showed that black residents were in fact significantly more likely to support his staying in office, though nearly 40 percent still believed he should step down.
Appearing on CBS after clips of the interview with Northam were played, two Democratic members of Virginia’s congressional delegation, Reps. Jennifer Wexton and Don Beyer, said they still believed Northam and Fairfax should step down.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.