Making the click-through worthwhile: You’re going to want to read this whole thing. You may have thought the scandals surrounding Virginia’s Democratic officials couldn’t have gotten worse, but . . . yeah, they’ve gotten worse. Plus, reasons why Governor Ralph Northam shouldn’t be able to even attempt the “everyone was doing it” excuse; Congressional Democrats unveil a Green New Deal that cuts out all of the details and the most wildly controversial, under-discussed aspects of earlier versions. Advertisement Virginia’s Democrats Have Become a Virtual Superfund Site on the James River They should have set House of Cards in Richmond. To bring you up to speed . . . Governor Ralph Northam has a college yearbook saying his nickname was “Coonman” and a medical-school yearbook that depicts on his page someone in blackface and someone in a Klan outfit. He insists that he doesn’t know how he got the nickname, that he’s not either person in the picture, that he did not select the picture, and that he had never seen the picture before — but only after stating on Friday, “I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now.” On Saturday, he insisted that he had been mistaken. He admitted that he did wear shoe polish as blackface on a separate occasion to imitate Michael Jackson. Almost every Democratic lawmaker in the state called for Northam’s resignation over the weekend, but there’s been only quiet murmurs of an effort to impeach him. The man who would replace Northam if he resigned, Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax, faces an accusation of sexual assault from Vanessa Tyson, a professor at Scripps College in California. She named a specific date and offered a graphic description of the encounter in a lengthy statement. Fairfax insists the 2004 sexual encounter in a Boston hotel room was consensual. He claimed that the Washington Post declined to run an article about Tyson’s accusations because of “significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegations,”; the paper said it did not find inconsistencies but simply could not find evidence to verify or contradict her account. The National Organization for Women called on Fairfax to resign after Tyson came forward, saying, “We always believe and support survivors.” Advertisement The man who would replace Northam and Fairfax if they both resigned, Virginia attorney general Mark Herring, apologized yesterday for wearing blackface while portraying a rapper as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia in 1980. Herring said on Saturday, in response to Northam’s yearbook photo, “It is no longer possible for Governor Northam to lead our Commonwealth and it is time for him to step down. I have spoken with Lieutenant Governor Fairfax and assured him that, should he ascend to the governorship, he will have my complete support and commitment to ensuring his success and the success of our Commonwealth.” Herring is now in the awkward position of arguing that wearing blackface in medical school demands departure from office but wearing blackface as an undergraduate does not. Herring stepped down as co-chair of the Democratic Attorneys General Association on Wednesday. He now must explain why his actions warrant his resignation from that partisan political organization, but not his role as the state’s chief law enforcement officer. And now there’s a fourth Virginia Democratic official getting ensnared in this: Virginia Democratic Congressman Bobby Scott was made aware of allegations of sexual assault against now-Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax over a year ago by the alleged victim herself, ABC News has learned. In a statement given to ABC News on Wednesday, Scott wrote, “Allegations of sexual assault need to be taken seriously. I have known Professor Tyson for approximately a decade and she is a friend. She deserves the opportunity to have her story heard.” In late December 2017 and early January 2018, aides to Scott said he learned that it was Tyson herself who was involved in a “MeToo allegation,” concerning Fairfax. She also informed him that she had already told the Washington Post about an alleged incident involving Fairfax and that she had given the Post Scott’s name as a character witness. Scott can fairly ask what he was in a position to do. He’s not a law-enforcement officer, and at that point, Tyson didn’t want her name going public. On the other hand, he’s now in a position where his longtime friend told him that the lieutenant governor had assaulted her and he did . . . nothing, really. Advertisement Advertisement One irony about all three top Virginia elected officials facing a career-threatening scandal simultaneously is that it makes it more likely that all three survive the political maelstrom. If wearing blackface as a younger man is serious enough to drive Northam from office, it’s hard to understand why it should be acceptable in the state’s attorney general, and if blackface is sufficient reason to remove a lawmaker from office, it raises the question of whether a detailed accusation of sexual assault from a woman with no discernable political motivation shouldn’t be as well. Virginia politics is now something of a political suicide pact or Mexican standoff. In order to ensure Virginia House speaker Kirk Cox, a Republican, doesn’t become the next governor, Democrats must keep at least one of them, which means all three will probably survive. Advertisement One under-discussed aspect of these revelations is that for once, we know that it’s unlikely that they’re being leaked by Republicans; if the GOP had this information, they would have used it during the 2017 campaigns. No, what’s much more likely is that Northam, Fairfax, and Herring or allies of the three men are leaking them against each other. Virginia’s term limit for governors means that the state is never more than four years away from an open seat and, considering the state’s rapidly changing demographics, if you win the Democratic nomination, the odds are no worse than 50-50 that you win. There are a lot of ambitious Virginia Democrats with sharp elbows.<doc-sep>They said they "respect the right of women to come forward and be heard", but did not say the lieutenant governor should quit either.<doc-sep>Melinda Henneberger Opinion columnist It’s starting to feel like such an epic meltdown in Virginia that, like Lot’s wife exiting Sodom, the last one out of Richmond could look back and be turned into a pillar of salt. Yet even if every last Democratic official in the commonwealth had to step down, this story would still be about so much more than 2020 or how the state party will survive this self-inflicted reckoning. It’s certainly about how warped we are still by slavery; otherwise, why keep play acting scenes that are so hurtful? A Missouri nurse was fired just a few months ago for wearing blackface to a Halloween party. But could we have two political tribes with more divergent reactions to the same sickness, which is a deadened disregard for whole groups of humans because of who they are? Racism, misogyny and ableism are only different strains of the same virus. But because our politics don’t recognize that, I’m not sure when America as a whole will ever recover. Read more commentary: Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam squanders his moral authority Virginia Democrats can't claim ignorance of blackface: Today's talker Can you be a former Catholic? With new child sex abuse betrayal, I'm about to find out The Democratic tribe has a governor who lost me when he talked about babies with physical deformities who survive third-trimester abortions being “kept comfortable” and “resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired.” But, naturally, only the other tribe — Republicans — cared about that initial affront to human rights by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a doctor. Then we saw the disturbing Ku Klux Klan and blackface photo in Northam's medical school yearbook, and heard about that time he dressed up like Michael Jackson, complete with the shoe polish that was so darn hard to wash off his cheeks. Democrats across the land rightly said no, you can’t lead after that, not in this party. No blackface in my former sundown town Everyone knows this except Dr. Northam, and possibly Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, who as it turns out also darkened his face for a college party he attended as rapper Kurtis Blow in 1980. You boys have a lot to work out is all I can say. Even in the virtually all-white former sundown town in Southern Illinois where I was growing up about the same time these Virginia officials were in school, I never heard of anyone feeling compelled to put on blackface — maybe because there was no one around to humiliate with such a display. But still today in the Republican Party, the most blatant shows of racial disrespect are laughed off, if not lapped up. Sometimes there's an apology, and then a repeat performance. It's in the GOP that you can say your African-American opponent will “monkey this up” and still be elected governor of Florida. In 2018. After robocalls featuring a man speaking in a minstrel dialect. It’s Republicans who for years put up with the racial stylings of Iowa Rep. Steve King, who imagines immigrants with “calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert." And of course, the GOP is now led by a man who tried to put white supremacists shouting Nazi slogans like “blood and soil” on equal moral footing with those protesting racism. Donald Trump has lied again and again about the criminality of immigrants and, according to The Washington Post, is considering a “far-reaching rollback of civil rights law that would dilute federal rules against discrimination in education, housing and other aspects of American life.” The president himself has told us how he treats women, and I believe him. Pathology and partisanship all around Democrats are generally more inclined to believe allegations of sexual assault than Republicans are. Yet inconvenient as it would have been under the circumstances, Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax was not immediately disqualified by allegations that he had sexually assaulted a woman at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in the summer of 2004. “What began as consensual kissing quickly turned into a sexual assault,” the woman, Vanessa Tyson, a fellow at Stanford University and associate professor at Scripps College, said in a statement. She accused Fairfax of forcing her to perform oral sex and said, “I cannot believe, given my obvious distress, that Mr. Fairfax thought this forced sexual act was consensual.” NBC News reported that Fairfax, who has said that everything that happened between them was consensual, “used profane language in a private meeting Monday night, while referring to his accuser, Dr. Vanessa Tyson. Two sources tell us Fairfax said of Tyson: “F--- that b----.” How delightful. The point is not that there’s pathology all around, true as that is, but that we’ll be stuck right where we are until we’re no longer partisans first. And the next generation of leaders, whose every stumble will have been recorded, shared and made searchable, can only get out ahead of this by doing better. Melinda Henneberger is a columnist and editorial writer for The Kansas City Star and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow her on Twitter: @MelindaKCMO<doc-sep>NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 24: Trump Tower stands on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on August 24, 2018 in New York City. Following new allegations over hush money that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid to an adult-film actress, the Manhattan district attorneyÕs office in New York City may seek criminal charges against the Trump Organization in the coming days. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) WASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 08: US Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) remarks on the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the US Capitol November 8, 2006 in Washington, DC. Warner said he supports President George W. Bush's nomination of former CIA Director Robert Gates for Secretary of Defense. Warner said he anticipates Gates' confirmation before the end of the year. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), joined by Senate Assistant Minority Leader John Thune (R-SD) (L) and Senate Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), speaks following a Senate Republican Policy luncheon at the Russell Senate Office Building on May 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. (CNN) — The story of this week, the lasting story with long-ranging implications, isn’t President Trump’s quickly-forgotten State of the Union speech or acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s super-contentious testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee. It was the utter collapse of the political futures of the top three Democratic elected officials in Virginia. Gov. Ralph Northam spent the week fending off calls from every corner of the Democratic Party to resign after admitting – and then recanting – that he had been either in blackface or KKK robes in a photo on his medical school yearbook page. By the end of the week, reports suggested Northam had told senior staff he was sticking it out – despite the ongoing chorus asking him to bow out. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax now faces not one but two allegations of sexual assault – one in 2000, the other in 2004. While Fairfax has denied both accusations, the woman alleging the 2004 assault, Vanessa Tyson, came forward this week to put a name to accusations that Fairfax had forced her into oral sex during the Democratic National Convention in Boston. And the second woman, Meredith Watson, put her name on her accusation Friday. While most national Democrats had resisted calls for Fairfax’s resignation, the new allegation Friday will complicate that. Then, finally, is Attorney General Mark Herring, who acknowledged this week that he attended a party in blackface in 1980. Herring, like Fairfax, was seemingly spared calls for resignation – instead embarking on a series of meetings and calls designed to fix his error in judgment. Below, the week in 19 headlines: Monday: Tuesday: Wednesday: Thursday: Friday: How does this end? I struggle to see Northam and Fairfax surviving. Herring has the best chance of the three to remain in office, but even if he does, he has incurred serious political damage if/when he runs for governor (or becomes governor). The Point: Virginia over the past decade has been one of the Democratic Party’s great success stories. It went from a reliably Republican state to one in which Democrats held the lion’s share of key political offices. This disaster tarnishes that rise – and threatens to hand Republicans an opportunity this fall and beyond.<doc-sep>
Virginia's top three Democratic politicians are embroiled in scandals, launching the Commonwealth into a state of chaos. Governor Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring both admitted to wearing blackface in the 1980s, but neither have resigned. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax is accused of sexual assaulting two women in the early 2000s. The crisis has no clear end in sight, with all the politicians standing their ground. Here's where the situation currently stands. Virginia has been mired in political turmoil over the past week as its Democratic governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and a key member of the State Senate found themselves embroiled in separate scandals involving wearing racially offensive blackface, editing yearbooks containing blackface photos, and allegations of sexual assault. The revelations have brought Virginia's long and painful history of systemic racism to the forefront of the public discussion and put Democrats in a bind. Here's a timeline of everything we know so far, and what could happen next: Ralph Northam offered conflicting explanations for a photo on his yearbook page On February 1, the right-leaning blog Big League Politics published a photo from a page in Eastern Virginia Medical School's 1984 yearbook that included a photograph of a person wearing blackface standing next to another in a Klu Klux Klan costume. On Friday night, Northam put out a statement apologizing for having appeared in the photograph after its authenticity was confirmed by other outlets, but did not state whether he was the person in blackface or the costume. Soon after, a slew of Democratic state and federal officials called on Northam to resign office and let Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, a progressive African-American politician many considered to be a rising star in the party, take over the governorship. But in a stunning press conference the next day, Northam walked back his statement from the night before. He denied being one of the people in the yearbook photo, but said he had painted his face black with shoe polish for a Michael Jackson look-alike contest during the 1980s — even offering to moonwalk on the podium. Northam's performance at the press conference spurred even more outrage and calls for him to step aside, including from US Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. But Northam's political fate got more complicated when his lieutenant governor found himself at the center of his own scandal. Justin Fairfax continues to deny two troubling allegations of sexual assault On Sunday night, Big League Politics published a screenshot from a social media page belonging to Vanessa Tyson, a professor of political science at Scripps College, on which she wrote that someone who assaulted her at the 2004 Democratic National Convention "would likely get a VERY big promotion," with the article heavily implying that person was Fairfax. At around 3 a.m. on Monday, Fairfax's office put out a statement strongly denying Fairfax had ever assaulted anyone, with Fairfax later calling the allegations a "totally fabricated story out of the blue." Fairfax's statement claimed the Washington Post had reviewed his accuser's claims and found "inconsistencies and red flags" in her account. The Post later pushed back on that claim, saying they decided not to run Tyson's story due to lack of corroboration, not because of any inconsistencies. On Wednesday, Tyson came forward and alleged in a lengthy and detailed statement of her own that Fairfax forced her to preform oral sex on him in a hotel room at the DNC. She has retained the high-power law firm that represented Christine Blasey Ford during the Kavanaugh hearings. Fairfax's camp remains on the offense, maintaining that Fairfax and Tyson had a consensual sexual encounter that involved no assault or coercion. They have threatened to sue "people who continue to spread these false allegations," and even suggested rival politicians planted the story to smear Fairfax, who planned to run for Governor in 2021. A second accuser, Meredith Watson, alleged in a Friday statement released through an attorney that Fairfax raped her when they were both students at Duke University in 2000 in a "premeditated and aggressive" attack. Watson's lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, said they are in possession of emails, Facebook messages, and statements from classmates all confirming that Watson discussed the alleged attack with friends immediately after they say it occurred, and in the following years, some of which they provided to the Washington Post.