Virginia governor's life appears to be back to normal, two months after the blackface scandal broke
1 / 3FILE - In this Friday, Feb. 22, 2019 file photo, Gov. Ralph Northam, center, greets members of the Richmond 34 and other African-American leaders for a breakfast at the Governors Mansion at the Capitol in Richmond, Va. The Richmond 34 were a group of African Americans who defied segregation laws in the 1960's. Two months after his political career was all but dead, life for Northam looks mostly back to normal.
Violet Robinson, a retired educator who is African-American, gave the governor a big hug after meeting him for the first time.It's a remarkable turnabout, just two months since Northam was nearly driven out of office. And it highlights the volatility of politics today, with new scandals sprouting constantly, only to be forgotten when some other reason for outrage arises.
A picture surfaced on a Friday afternoon, Feb. 1, of a man in blackface and another person wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit on his medical school yearbook page. Northam issued two apologies within hours, indicating that he was one of the people in the picture. By midnight it appeared his entire political base was gone, with the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, other key Democratic groups and top allies calling on him to resign.
But Northam got some breathing room when scandal soon enveloped his potential successors. Two women publicly accused Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault, which he denies, and Attorney General Mark Herring announced he'd also worn blackface in college, just days after calling on Northam to resign. Both Fairfax and Herring have also resisted calls to resign. And other politicians around the South soon had their own explaining to do over yearbook images taken long ago.
"The curriculum we're using in our K-12 public education system is both inadequate and also inaccurate," he said.
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