Although two of the Democratic officials — Gov. Ralph Northam, who on Saturday admitted to using blackface in 1984, and Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax, who has been accused of a sexual assault in 2004 — have indicated that they will not resign, Attorney General Mark Herring, also a Democrat, has suggested that he could quit after acknowledging Wednesday that he, too, had once worn blackface.
At midday Thursday, the allegations involving racist history spread to Republicans for the first time when The Virginian-Pilot reported that the Senate majority leader, Thomas K. Norment Jr., helped oversee a Virginia Military Institute yearbook that featured racist photographs and slurs, including blackface.
Norment, who has been a state senator since 1992, was managing editor of the yearbook, called The Bomb, in 1968, the Pilot reported. The paper said that on one page of the yearbook, a student poses in blackface at a party, while another page features a photograph of two men in blackface holding a football.
Northam, whose staff and political advisers have been working around the clock since this story erupted on Friday afternoon, has hired a Washington-based communications firm led by African-Americans to help him weather the gravest challenge of his political career. The company’s chairman, Jarvis C. Stewart, was hoping to sit down Thursday with the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has come to Richmond to discuss racial reconciliation at Virginia Union University, a historically black college here.
Some in Northam’s circle are hoping to have the spouses of the three Democrats begin talking to in an effort to alleviate tensions between the leaders at a time of unremitting scrutiny.
Nationally, Democrats proceeded gingerly on the accusations that a California professor, Dr. Vanessa C. Tyson, leveled against Fairfax, stating that her claims should be taken seriously but calling for an investigation rather than Fairfax’s resignation.
“I thought her story was deeply disturbing and credible so there must be an investigation,” Sen. Kirsten Gilibrand, a 2020 presidential candidate who was one of the first major Democrats to call for the ouster of former Sen. Al Franken, said on a podcast Wednesday night.
Sen. Kamala Harris, another presidential hopeful, called Tyson’s claims “credible” and said there should be an inquiry.
Fairfax, who has regularly stopped to speak with reporters in recent days, rushed through the State Capitol on Thursday morning. Ignoring questions about Tyson, he said only that he was headed to a Senate session and that he had spoken with Northam.
Norment, a powerful Republican, emerged from a caucus meeting of Senate Republicans just before 1:30, but ignored questions about the VMI yearbook from dozens of reporters who followed him to the Senate chamber where the Capitol police ushered him in.
He was in a more jovial mood on Wednesday night, when he encountered reporters after the revelations about Herring and Fairfax and joked that he may be governor before long, though he is not the first Republican in the line of succession.
Sharpton, appearing at the hastily arranged discussion at Virginia Union, called forcefully for Northam and Herring to resign, saying, “If you sin, you must repent for the sin.”
Regarding Fairfax, Sharpton cautioned against conflating the sexual assault claim against the lieutenant governor with the admission of wearing blackface by the governor and Herring. Sharpton said that there should be an investigation into the accusations against Fairfax and that both Tyson and the lieutenant governor should be respected during the process.
In the Capitol, the fast-moving events of the week left just about no one willing to predict what could come next, even in the whispered conversations that have dominated its corridors this week.
“Our diverse commonwealth has been deeply shaken by these developments, but nonetheless remains economically vibrant, fiscally sound, safe and secure,” Kirk Cox, the Republican speaker of the House of Delegates — and a possible governor, under extraordinary circumstances — said in a statement. “We have weathered the storms of four centuries and will weather this one as well.”
On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump adopted a view that was more aggressive and partisan.
“Democrats at the top are killing the Great State of Virginia,” he wrote on Twitter, predicting that the commonwealth would return to the Republican column in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump, who has himself been repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct and racism, argued, “If the three failing pols were Republicans, far stronger action would be taken.”
Lawmakers spent much of Wednesday, and well into Wednesday night, privately considering how to respond to the wave of allegations and accusations that threaten to cripple much of the state’s political leadership. With regard to Herring, many Democratic officials suggested that they would take their cue from the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, which earlier called for Northam’s resignation but remained publicly silent through Wednesday’s maelstrom of developments.
And Republicans, who stand to benefit politically from the turmoil surrounding three of the state’s leading Democrats, were relatively muted under the chaotic circumstances. The Republican Party of Virginia, which previously demanded Northam’s resignation, called Wednesday for Herring’s, but many GOP lawmakers rebuffed requests for comment.
The crisis engulfing Democrats grew worse Wednesday when Herring, who was elected attorney general in 2013 and had been expected to mount a viable campaign for governor in 2021, said that, as an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia in 1980, he and friends “dressed up and put on wigs and brown makeup” for a party.
Herring’s disclosure came just days after he called for Northam to quit. The attorney general said Wednesday that “honest conversations and discussions will make it clear whether I can or should continue to serve as attorney general.”
But Democrats and Republicans alike were struggling more broadly about how to respond to the sexual assault allegation against Fairfax, the lieutenant governor, who has denied any wrongdoing.
In a statement Wednesday, Tyson provided a detailed account of her encounter with Fairfax in 2004, saying that he had forced her to perform oral sex on him.
“I never gave any form of consent,” said Tyson, whose searing statement recounted a violent attack.
Fairfax, also seen as a contender for governor in 2021, acknowledged what he described as a “consensual encounter” but suggested that Tyson had misrepresented what occurred.
“I take this situation very seriously and continue to believe Dr. Tyson should be treated with respect,” he said in a statement Wednesday. “But I cannot agree to a description of events that simply is not true.”
Some leading Virginia Democrats, though, began to distance themselves from Fairfax, suggesting that his political standing could erode quickly.
Rep. Jennifer Wexton wrote on Twitter: “I believe Dr. Vanessa Tyson.”
And Rep. Bobby Scott said that he had known Tyson as a friend for about a decade and that she “deserves the opportunity to have her story heard.”
Late Wednesday, aides to Scott confirmed that in late December 2017 or early January 2018, Tyson told him that she had made an allegation of sexual assault against Fairfax, in the course of notifying Scott that she had given his name as a character reference to The Washington Post, which was investigating the allegation. (The Post did not publish a story at the time because it could not corroborate any of the accounts.)
Northam, under siege since Friday, when a racist photograph on his medical school yearbook page was revealed, was silent and secluded. Northam initially admitted that he had appeared in the yearbook in either blackface or a Ku Klux Klan robe, and apologized to the people of Virginia, but the next day he reversed his position. At the same time, he acknowledged a separate episode when he had worn blackface.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.