Less than a week after Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring admitted to wearing blackface as young men, Fairfax on Friday afternoon faced a second detailed assault accusation in three days, transforming what had been a crisis for Virginia Democrats into a searing dilemma for the national party.
The political turmoil for Democratic leaders this weekend is unfolding at the intersection of race and gender, and risks pitting the party’s most pivotal constituencies against one another. If Democrats do not oust Fairfax, at a time when the party has taken a zero-tolerance stand on sexual misconduct in the #MeToo era, they could anger female voters. But the specter of Fairfax, 39, being pushed out while two older white men remain in office — despite blackface behavior that evoked some of the country’s most painful racist images — would deeply trouble many African-Americans.
"I think the Democratic Party would lack credibility if they followed a double standard,” said Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., who is head of the Congressional Black Caucus. Bass said that both Northam and Fairfax should step down.
Almost all of Virginia’s Democratic leaders and lawmakers on Friday night called on Fairfax to resign and a legislator vowed to introduce articles of impeachment if Fairfax did not quit by Monday. The state Democratic Party, after a conference call of its steering committee Saturday morning in which there was near-unanimous support for Fairfax to resign, issued a statement saying he no longer had “their confidence or support” and should quit. Fairfax has said he is innocent and will not step down.
Northam also insists he will not resign. He does not face an imminent impeachment threat, and neither does Herring, the attorney general and second in line to the governor, who has been effusively apologizing for once wearing blackface.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.