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Northam Cancels Appearance At Marsden Fundraiser After Protests

Over two months after Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D) came out with his wholehearted support of a highly controversial late-term abortion bill, his subsequent “infanticide” comments on the matter, and was hit with the release of racist photos from his past, the national media has packed up and left Richmond, but Virginians across the Commonwealth have not forgotten.

In the latest fallout from his scandals, Northam’s appearance at a fundraiser in Northern Virginia for a Democratic state senator ahead of the 2019 elections was cancelled after dozens of protesters showed up.

Last week, it was announced that Northam would be attending a campaign kickoff event for State Senator Dave Marsden (D-Burke) in the legislator’s home district.

Even though Marsden backed widespread calls for the governor to step down from office beginning February 1 in order to allow Virginians heal from the emergence of the shocking, racist photos, he completely flipped on his position to place a stark condemnation on Northam.

Just days after the announcement of the event, the Fairfax County NAACP and the Virginia GOP started to organize a protest as photos reportedly showing the governor appearing in blackface or dressed in KKK robes remain unexplained.

Although the two groups are on different sides of the political aisle, they have found one thing they can agree on: their dislike for Governor Northam.

Less an one hour before Northam was scheduled to appear at the fundraiser, his presence was cancelled due to “safety concerns.”

In a short interview in defense of the embattled governor, NBC 4 reports that Marsden, after having the headliner of his reelection fundraiser drop out because of protesters, still does not see Northam as a liability.

“He’s been an effective leader, and we want to work with him,” Marsden said.

When asked about his blatant flip flop on his call for Northam to resign, Marsden added, “Politics is a tough business…We made a recommendation to the governor that he might step aside…he chose to stay and do what the people elected him to do.”

What Marsden actually means is that in an election year, lawmakers have principles, but if they are not conducive to getting reelected, they can be changed.

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Pam Northam’s Cotton-Picking Catastrophe

Pam Northam, the wife of embattled Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D) is now under fire after upsetting an eighth-grade African-American girl during a tour of the Executive Mansion as she was handed a piece of cotton by the First Lady, also asked to imagine being enslaved. The latest racial debacle comes almost one month after the governor reportedly appeared in a racist photo in his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook – either dressed in blackface or wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and hood – but denied doing so.

Questions were also raised about another yearbook photo, this time while Northam was a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in the early 1980s, where his nickname of “Coonman,” a racial epithet, is placed below his head shot.

In the days following, Governor Northam walked back his admission of appearing in the first photo, which included an attempt to moonwalk in front of reporters in a crowded room, and his wife telling him “inappropriate circumstances.”

However, it seems the Commonwealth’s First Lady did not heed her own advice amid the loathsome beginning of the racial “reconciliation tour.” Last week, the first stop at Virginia Union University (VUU) had to be cancelled due to widespread student backlash and subsequent calls for him to step down from office.

Nevertheless, another instance of racial insensitivity has led to the governor’s scandal being spread to his wife.

“The Governor and Mrs. Northam have asked the residents of the Commonwealth to forgive them for their racially insensitive past actions,” wrote Leah Dozier Walker, who oversees the Office of Equity and Community Engagement at the Virginia Department of Education. “But the actions of Mrs. Northam, just last week, do not lead me to believe that this Governor’s office has taken seriously the harm and hurt they have caused African-Americans in Virginia or that they are deserving of our forgiveness,” she added in her February 25 letter to Virginia lawmakers and the office of the governor.

On February 21, the Northams hosted a gathering at the Executive Mansion in downtown Richmond of approximately 100 youths who had served as State Senate pages during this year’s legislative session. Pam Northam took groups of pages on a tour through the building – built in 1813 by slave labor and is the oldest active governor’s residence in country – and in the kitchen, she held up samples of cotton and tobacco to a group of about 20 children and described the enslaved workers who picked it.

“Mrs. Northam then asked these three pages (the only African-American pages in the program) if they could imagine what it must have been like to pick cotton all day,” Walker wrote. “I can not for the life of me understand why the First Lady would single out the African-American pages for this — or — why she would ask them such an insensitive question.”

The governor’s office said the First Lady handed the cotton to whomever was nearby, both African-American and Caucasian pages, and wanted everyone to note the “sharpness” of the cotton boll and imagine how uncomfortable it would have been to handle all day.

In a letter written by Walker’s daughter addressed to Pam Northam, the young girl said she did not take the cotton, but her friend did.

“It made her very uncomfortable,” the girl wrote. “I will give you the benefit of the doubt, because you gave it to some other pages.”

“But you followed this up by asking: ‘Can you imagine being an enslaved person, and having to pick this all day?’ which didn’t help the damage you had done,” the girl added in her letter to Pam Northam.

While the First Lady offered the cotton to all of the pages in attendance over multiple tours, the situation shows a gross negligence of understanding the environment surrounding Virginia’s executive branch over the entirety of February, which is also, quite ironically, Black History Month.

“I regret that I have upset anyone,” Pam Northam said in a statement from the governor’s spokeswoman, Ofirah Yheskel.

Although Governor Northam has committed to dedicating the remainder of his term in office, which ends January 2022, to “racial equity” and “healing,” the calls for his resignation are far-reaching. After the latest development, it seems that not much thought is being taken into account for whatever “healing” the governor and his family are attempting to promote.

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Former Gov. McAuliffe Quiets Calls For Resignations In Virginia’s Executive Branch

As all three political leaders of Virginia’s Democrat-led executive branch have dealt with racial and sexual scandals over the past two weeks, it seems that not only Attorney General Mark Herring (D), but also Governor Ralph Northam (D) may get off scot-free for appearing in racist photos. After a week of rapprochement of protests in front of the Executive Mansion in downtown Richmond and universal calls from his own party for his resignation, former Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) is also backing down his charge for Northam to leave office.

McAuliffe, a presumed 2020 Democratic presidential contender, appeared on CBS‘s “Face the Nation” to speak about the controversies in the Commonwealth, meanwhile peddling his new book “Beyond Charlottesville: Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism,” which is about how “Virginia and the country continue to deal with racism.”

While hitting off the segment with his new book, McAuliffe did not say a word about resignations, seemingly accepting Northam’s extraordinarily vague plan to redeem his image and his governorship with a “focus on race and equity.”

“I think he’s made a decision he’s going to stay in,” McAuliffe said of Northam, who was his own lieutenant governor while he was in charge of the Commonwealth until January 2018. McAuliffe added, “but the way that Ralph survives and brings Virginia back together, he’s got to lean in on these very important issues.”

Nevertheless, as Northam launches his “listening tour” throughout the Commonwealth to learn more about “race, history, and white privilege,” and other obvious things he apparently never knew, Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax (D) is also dealing with a deepening sexual assault scandal that has his staffers jumping ship and his part-time law firm employer suspending him.

Currently, Fairfax is battling back against two accusers, one who said he sexually assaulted her in 2004, and one who said he raped her while in college in 2000.

Dr. Vanessa Tyson, a Scripps College professor, has alleged that Fairfax sexually assaulted her at the 2004 Boston Democratic National Convention. In her statement published by the New York Times, Dr. Tyson said she came forward after the news of Fairfax’s likely elevation to the top political position in Virginia as the governor is embroiled in racial controversy, because it “flooded” her with “painful memories, bringing back feelings of grief, shame, and anger that stemmed from an incident with Mr. Fairfax.”

Meredith Wilson, a student at Duke University in 2000, while Fairfax also attended the North Carolina college, came forth days later with allegations that she was raped by Fairfax in a “premeditated and aggressive” fashion.

Fairfax has called the accusations “false and unsubstantiated,” a “totally fabricated story,” and “demonstrably false.” The lieutenant governor has also accused staffers of embattled Governor Northam for leaking the sexual assault allegations and engaging in a “vicious and coordinated smear campaign” to derail his pathway to the governor’s office.

When news of the second sexual assault allegation broke, McAuliffe wasted no time in calling for Fairfax’s “immediate” resignation on Twitter.

“The allegations against Justin Fairfax are serious and credible. It is clear to me that he can no longer effectively serve the people of Virginia as Lieutenant Governor. I call for his immediate resignation,” he said.

However, McAuliffe is now quieting his own requests and demanding an investigation into the allegations.

Commenting on the situation, McAuliffe said, “Very serious allegations have been made. They need to be investigated…So we will go through that process.”

Showing a willingness to investigate the alleged crimes, Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights) has said any inquiry must be bipartisan and “very deliberate.” However, House Democrats have blocked any probe by the General Assembly from moving forward, scuttling last week’s impeachment push by Delegate Patrick Hope (D-Arlington).

Regardless, McAuliffe’s remarks on Sunday suggest that Democratic leaders are coming around to accepting the scandalous status quo in Richmond. It could be that the party faithful have realized that a Republican would be in line for the governorship if all three in the executive branch resigned, or that, considering they came out and denounced Northam, Fairfax, and Herring, they feel they can remain in a position of moral high ground on issues of race, gender, and social justice.

Despite the situation looking more and more like a political double standard, Virginia’s top-three elected Democrats may end up holding on to their positions for the time being. Whether any of the three can go on to win higher offices still remains to be seen.

The other lurking question facing Virginia Democrats is whether the tainted triumvirate hurts the party as it looks to take control of both houses of the General Assembly in November’s elections, following its 15-seat gain in the House of Delegates in 2017. With a one-member majority in both the House and Senate, the longer the scandals roll on, the more dissatisfied the Democratic base could become, losing excitement at the ballot box.