Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on Wednesday lost the confidence of the Washington Post’s editorial board as he fights for his political career.
Northam’s handling of scandal stemming from a photo on his 1984 medical school yearbook page of a man in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan robes and hood led the paper to conclude the pediatric neurologist and Army veteran is no longer fit to lead the commonwealth.
“What’s done cannot be undone. He must go,” the paper’s board wrote.
“His shifting and credulity-shredding explanations for the racist photograph on his medical school yearbook page, and the silence into which he then succumbed for days — after initially promising to do ‘the hard work’ of atonement and apology to restore his standing with Virginians — is simply too much,” the paper said. “His decade-long record in public office is admirable; it is equally true that his governorship has been irredeemably wrecked by the self-inflicted, racially callous and clueless mess he has made in recent days.”
Northam denies being in the photo, but has admitted to putting shoe polish on his face for a Michael Jackson costume that same year.
The line of succession is unclear should Northam step down because his No. 2, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, faces a sexual assault allegation, and the commonwealth’s third-ranking official, Attorney General Mark Herring, also acknowledged Wednesday he donned blackface in the 1980s. Both are also Democrats.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that Gov. Northam is still a pediatric neurologist
