Joe Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, broke with the party Monday over demands that Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam resign over a 35-year-old photo seeming to associate him with racist images.
Lieberman, who has since switched to be an independent, said Northam, a Democrat, should be judged on his behavior as a whole rather than the incident captured in his 1984 medical school yearbook, over which the governor has given conflicting explanations.
“I think there’s a rush to judgment that is unfair to him,” Lieberman told CNN. “One, he says he wasn’t in that picture. Two, we ought to fairly ask him, did he know the picture was on his page of that yearbook? And three, really he ought to judged not he context of his whole life.”
“He deserves a chance to prove what really is his essence,” Lieberman said.
A photograph emerged Friday from Northam’s medical school yearbook page showing a man wearing blackface and another dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Northam initially admitted he was in the photo, without identifying which person he was, but later walked back the confession.
After a tsunami of demands from top liberal groups and 2020 Democratic presidential candidates that Northam resign, the governor appeared to seal his fate by revealing in a news conference Saturday that he had worn blackface in 1984 as part of a Michael Jackson costume.
Northam still denies he was in the yearbook photo.
“I am simply asking for the opportunity to demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the person I was is not the man I am today. I am asking for the opportunity to earn your forgiveness,” Northam said Saturday.
