Posted on 02/08/2019 6:19:15 AM PST by billorites
RICHMOND, Va.—A top Republican Virginia lawmaker was forced to defend his role editing a college yearbook with photographs of students in blackface, as the state’s political crisis spread to both parties Thursday.
Senate Majority Leader Thomas Norment served as managing editor of the 1968 yearbook at Virginia Military Institute that included the blackface photos and racial slurs.
Gov. Ralph Northam, Democrat, faces calls to step down following the emergence last week of a photo from his medical-school yearbook that showed a person in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan garb. Mr. Northam said he wasn’t in the picture, after first saying he was.
Attorney General Mark Herring, also a Democrat, disclosed Wednesday that he was in blackface while dressed a rapper as a college freshman in 1980. Democratic Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax is denying an allegation he sexually assaulted a woman in a hotel room during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Richmond has been plunged into chaos without a clear sense of how the leadership crisis will shake out. In the event all three top Democrats left office, the next person in succession for the governorship would be the speaker of the state’s House of Delegates, who is Kirk Cox, a Republican.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said at a press conference Saturday that he wasn't either of the people depicted in racist attire in a picture from his 1984 medical school yearbook. Photo: AP
Mr. Norment, the top Republican in the GOP-led Senate, said in a statement that he wasn’t in any of the photos and didn’t take any of the photos, but that he wasn’t surprised that “those wanting to engulf Republican leaders in the current situation” would highlight his yearbook. The disclosure was first reported by the Virginian-Pilot.
“The use of blackface is abhorrent in our society and I emphatically condemn it,” Mr. Norment, who added that he was intent on staying in his role to pass a fiscally responsible budget.
Delegate Lamont Bagby, a Democrat and chairman of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, said Thursday the caucus was working through the revelations. He said the black caucus would release a statement sometime Thursday but didn’t know when. “Every time we get ready to put a statement out, something else happens,” he said.
He said the group also would like more information about the allegations against Mr. Fairfax. “We are anxious to see what an investigation gives us,” he told reporters at the Virginia state house.
Asked about Mr. Herring’s recent disclosure that he wore blackface as a 19-year-old college student, Mr. Bagby said, “We’re working through that as well.”
Rep. Donald McEachin (D., Va.), said the state’s congressional delegation planned to issue a statement of support for Mr. Herring. Mr. McEachin, who is black, said there was a “qualitative difference” between Mr. Northam and Mr. Herring’s situation.
“I had the occasion to speak to him, obviously it was by telephone, but he sounded like he was on the verge of tears,” he said of Mr. Herring. “I believe that he was sincere in his apology.”
He said how Mr. Northam handled the situation suggests “he does not have the capacity to lead or the capacity to heal us.”
Meanwhile, lawmakers have been working on a revised two-year budget and grappling with reconciling federal and state tax codes due to the 2017 federal tax overhaul law.
Aubrey Layne, Virginia’s finance secretary and a member of Mr. Northam’s cabinet, said he has been assuring debt-ratings firms that the state is getting its budget work done despite the political storm roiling Richmond.
“It’s a short cycle,” Mr. Layne said in an interview. “And we’ve got a lot of work to do.” The legislature has until Feb. 23 to finish its work.
A Republican, Mr. Layne says he tries to maintain a nonpartisan profile in his job, which involves working with Virginia’s divided government. He has also been meeting with the governor.
Regarding the political turmoil, “I think the sooner we can deal with this uncertainty the better,” he said.
It really is an insult. Trying to overturn elections over something so trivial as this is disgusting. America needs to wake up to who is controlling things. I’m not a dem, but I hope Northam defies the elites for us all.
That’s just how they rolled back then.
What’s more, they drank before they were 21, hazed fraternity pledges, and took a few liberties with their female guests (wink). So that means they were drunk, bullying rapists, right?
They’re working very hard on the moral equivalence - they want to say it’s not only Democrats.
Georgetown sold 272 slaves to a planter in Louisiana in 1838. Maybe the institution would have gone bankrupt otherwise, so their continued existence is because of that sale. Georgetown University has been trying to find ways to atone--for example, it named a building after the slave whose name was first on the list. But its alumni should be pressed to grovel and degrade themselves with abject apologies starting with Bill Clinton.
He didn’t edit out the inappropriate content, so he’s as bad as they are. His defense: “I was a Democrat then”.
Good one!
I wonder if I have a yearbook somewhere in my house with someone in blackface.
Hey — the Managing Editor of the Washington Post has a newspaper he edited that includes pictures of people in Blackface, and he just did that last week.
SO he should never be considered for public office, right?
I’m pretty sure 1968 is a different decade than the 80s, when the two democrats actually put on “blackface” as it is defined by their party.
I have never once put shoe polish on my face.
I once did a Coppertone Quick Tan and turned orange.
Wow, I was in solidarity with Trump back in the 80s!
It looks like the dems are getting ready to purge all white males from any position of influence in the party, and replace them with non-whites mostly females.
They should close any movie studios that produced movies with blackface.
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