A Year After Republicans Tried to Blow Up the Virginia Democrat Party

What a difference a year makes.  A year ago the Virginia Democrat Party was in crisis after a far right organization with ties to the Trump White House skillfully played for fools senior Virginia Democrats, most particularly Mark Warner (who in face to face encounters has never admitted he was played), and a number of LGBT organizations by the calculated release of racist photos from Governor Northam's medical school year book, allegations of sexual assault against Lt. Governor Fairfax and a forced confession from Attorney General Herring of having worn black face as a college student. The right wing/Republican goal was to destroy unity in the Democrat party in a desperate attempt to stave off loss of Republican control of the Virginia General Assembly,  At first, the fact that it was NOT Northam in the photos - they DO know who the individuals are despite EVMS's faux investigation and claims to the contrary- did not matter as the press and the black caucus went into a feeding frenzy.  Fortunately, none of the three targeted officials resigned and Democrats achieved their takeover of Richmond and a new progressive era in Virginia has begun.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at how Northam and the others have prevailed. Here are highlights:

During his State of the Commonwealth address earlier this month, Gov. Ralph Northam spoke to Virginia lawmakers about taking an “honest look” at the state’s past.

After congratulating the new Democratic majority on their gains in the General Assembly, he listed the priorities of his “fair and equitable” legislative agenda.

Sitting behind him was Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who would soon preside over a Senate that would pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

Also in the audience was Attorney General Mark Herring, who has made marijuana decriminalization and legalization a top priority, saying current laws disproportionately affect people of color.

As lawmakers rose to applaud the governor every few seconds, it was hard to recall that nearly a year before, the state’s top three officials — all Democrats — were mired in scandal, with near-ubiquitous calls for their resignations.

Saturday marks one year since a racist photo on Northam’s Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook page surfaced, setting off a chain of events that nearly brought down the entire Democratic leadership in Virginia and handed unified control of state government to Republicans.

But it didn’t. In fact, it had the opposite effect.

[Northam] refused to step down, saying that would be the easy way out.

“If I were to listen to the voices calling on me to resign my office today, I could spare myself from the different path that lies ahead,” he said. “I could avoid an honest conversation about harmful actions from my past.”

Instead, he began repeating with a consistent drumbeat that he was going to focus the rest of his term — which runs until January 2022 — on righting wrongs and addressing Virginia’s harsh, racist history.

Throughout the year — indeed, even just a month after the blackface scandal — polls showed that most black Virginians didn’t want Northam to quit.

Theodore Johnson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, thinks that’s because black voters are pragmatic. It doesn’t make sense for them to denounce Northam or his potential successors for something that happened decades ago, especially when the alternative was a Republican — Speaker of the House Kirk Cox, who under the state Constitution would have become governor if Northam resigned and Fairfax and Herring were both unable to succeed him.

“I don’t think we can say the scandal was good for black voters, but I do think we can say black voters leveraged the scandal for positive policy outcomes,” Johnson said. “It was black Virginians who told (Northam) the best way to make up for this would be to respond via policy.”

Here are a few of those policies he’s prioritized: a commission to look at racially discriminatory language in the state code. Another to look at how Virginia schools teach African American history.

A promise to end Virginia’s racial disparities in maternal deaths by 2025. A removal of references to Confederate president Jefferson Davis at Fort Monroe. A show of opposition to other Confederate monuments. A vow to veto any bills that increase mandatory minimum prison sentences, which the governor said disproportionately impact black Virginians.

Northam’s also done the other things the Democratic party expects him to do, Johnson said, including expand Medicaid, support the ERA ratification, and restore rights to felons. “He’s been a good party representative in terms of party objective, and he’s also the political capital that black Virginians accrued by not demanding his resignation,” Johnson said.

[I]t was an election year for Democrats, and rather than give Republicans more political fuel by showing division, they kept their heads down.

“Democrats didn’t want to generate any instability when it came to the party’s fortunes heading into the next election,” Lawless said.

Voters, too, drew distinctions between the Democratic Party as a whole and the top office-holders who were members of that party. Polls repeatedly showed a preference for the Democrats to control the legislature, despite the stain left on the party by the leaders’ scandals and the GOP campaign ads referencing them.

So voters elected a Democratic majority determined to protect women’s rights, pass stricter gun control, address criminal justice inequities, and make it easier to vote, work, live and go to school in Virginia without discrimination.  “Around issues pertaining to sex and race, the state has basically said, ‘Enough is enough, we’re not going to tolerate this,’” Lawless said.

Today, it seems things have gone back to normal in the state’s capital. Northam holds regular press conferences announcing his budget priorities. Fairfax presides over the Senate, posing for pictures with female ERA supporters and student doctors in the gallery. Herring signs on to lawsuits opposing various Trump administration actions. On Thursday, he was in Washington for a press conference announcing litigation to force federal officials to acknowledge that — thanks to Virginia — the ERA has enough votes to become part of the U.S. Constitution.

Hopefully Democrats - and LGBT organizations such as HRC and Equality Virginia - have learned a lesson and will never allow themselves to again be played for fools by operatives of the far right that oppose everything that needs to be done to move Virginia forward.