When Democrats won all three statewide constitutional offices in 2013 for the first time in over two decades, it seemed to herald a new era in Virginia politics. This change also brought significant policy wins, such as former governor Terry McAuliffe restoring the voting rights of over 200,000 convicted felons who had served out their sentences and attorney general Mark Herring’s refusal to defend Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage in the courts. This generally positive direction seemed confirmed when the Virginia Democrats held all three of those offices and made significant inroads in the state legislature in the 2017 elections.
But over the span of five days, all of that has been undone in the most spectacular way imaginable.
In that time, both the governor, Ralph Northam, and Herring have found themselves embroiled in a scandal over their use of blackface during their respective medical school and undergrad days in the 1980s. The lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, only the second black person to hold statewide office, has been accused of sexual assault by Dr Vanessa Tyson, a college professor and fellow attendee of the 2004 Democratic national convention in Boston, where the assault is alleged to have taken place.
(Fairfax has denied the accusations, and has retained the services of the same law firm that represented now supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh in his Senate confirmation proceedings.)
Democrats have sat uncomfortably with accountability for sexual predators in their ranks in the recent past. To this end, look no further than the outright hostility Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has faced from major Democratic donors for seeking to hold her now former colleague Al Franken accountable when photos and stories of him groping women gained public attention. And lest you think that the calls for Northam and Herring to account for their racist pasts and resign have been universal amongst Virginia Democrats, take a look at comments from Dick Saslaw, the minority leader in the Virginia senate:
His whole life has been about exactly the opposite, and that’s what you need to examine, not something that occurred 30 years ago. While it’s in very poor taste, I would think no one in the general assembly would like their college conduct examined. I would hate to have to go back and examine my two years in the army. Trust me. I was 18 years old and I was a handful, okay?”
And while blackface is an affront to the dignity of black Virginians like me, the records of Northam and Herring with regards to a compressor station feeding the now delayed Atlantic coast pipeline being sited in the historic black community of Union Hill reflect the same kind of callousness towards black people as smearing shoe polish on your face and dancing the moonwalk, only with much more tangible negative harms to the communities like the one I grew up in.
There will be people who argue that Democrats should not train their fire on their own, and that the party should unite against the common enemy they have in the Republican party and Donald Trump. After all, Trump is still president despite the release of the Access Hollywood tape where he discussed nothing less than sexual assault. Mitch McConnell is still the Senate majority leader despite posing in front of the Confederate battle flag at an event for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that has sponsored the same Confederate monuments that are being torn down and removed across the south.
But here’s what those people fail to understand: every day that Northam, Fairfax and Herring remain in office, the ability of Democrats to call to account an ever more reactionary Republican party is diminished. How can you decry the racism and misogyny of the modern-day Republican party when your own record is marked by the same sins? What does that say about Democrats’ genuine concern for marginalized people, around which that party has centered much of its rhetoric?
Accountability – true accountability – is rarely simple. Or easy. It is oftentimes a painful reckoning with those you have hurt and disappointed with your actions, with the potential for even more harm done down the road. Kirk Cox, the Republican speaker of the Virginia house of delegates, would become governor if all three resigned at once. Cox only holds his spot in Virginia’s line of succession due to an illegal gerrymandering scheme and a house of delegates race that was, quite literally, determined by the drawing of lots.
The thought of Cox’s elevation, especially when Virginia is so close to achieving a long-held goal of expanding Medicaid for over 200,000 citizens, is almost too painful to bear. But the idea that Democrats are comfortable with sweeping racism and misogyny under the rug when it suits them politically is far worse, and much more impactful on the lives of working-class Americans.
If the Democratic party’s actions are to ever credibly meet its rhetoric, then Northam, Fairfax and Herring must resign. Nothing less than the soul of the party itself is at stake.
Douglas Williams is a freelance commentator
