Although two of the Democratic officials — Gov. Ralph Northam, who on Saturday admitted to using blackface in 1984, and Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax, who has been accused of a sexual assault in 2004 — have indicated that they will not resign, Attorney General Mark Herring, also a Democrat, has suggested that he could quit after acknowledging Wednesday that he, too, had once worn blackface.
At midday Thursday, the allegations involving racist history spread to Republicans for the first time when The Virginian-Pilot reported that the Senate majority leader, Thomas K. Norment Jr., helped oversee a Virginia Military Institute yearbook that featured racist photographs and slurs, including blackface.
Norment, who has been a state senator since 1992, was managing editor of the yearbook, called The Bomb, in 1968, the Pilot reported. The paper said that on one page of the yearbook, a student poses in blackface at a party, while another page features a photograph of two men in blackface holding a football.
Northam, whose staff and political advisers have been working around the clock since this story erupted on Friday afternoon, has hired a Washington-based communications firm led by African-Americans. The company’s chairman, Jarvis C. Stewart, was hoping to sit down Thursday with the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has come to Richmond to discuss racial reconciliation at Virginia Union University.
Nationally, Democrats proceeded gingerly on the accusations that a California professor, Dr. Vanessa C. Tyson, leveled against Fairfax, stating that her claims should be taken seriously but calling for an investigation rather than Fairfax’s resignation.
Fairfax rushed through the State Capitol on Thursday morning. Ignoring questions about Tyson, he said only that he was headed to a Senate session and that he had spoken with Northam.
Norment, a powerful Republican, emerged from a caucus meeting of Senate Republicans just before 1:30 p.m. ET, but ignored questions about the VMI yearbook from dozens of reporters who followed him to the Senate chamber.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.