Va. governor meets with cabinet amid pressure to resign

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam met quietly on Monday with top administration officials but gave no public signal that he intends to step down despite mounting pressure to resign over a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook.

The Democrat was staying out of sight early Monday as he met with his Cabinet and senior staff, following a meeting the previous night with minority officials in his administration.

The meetings come amid nearly unanimous calls from within his own party to resign over the yearbook photo that shows someone in blackface and another person in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe. He first admitted he was in the picture, and then denied it over the weekend, but also acknowledged putting on blackface to imitate Michael Jackson at a dance contest decades ago.

The chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus declared that Northam “still does not understand the seriousness of his actions.”

“I think he’s been completely dishonest and disingenuous,” Rep. Karen Bass, D-California, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “He knew this picture was there, and he could’ve come clean and talked to African-Americans that he’s close to decades ago.”

The scandal threatens to cripple Northam’s ability to govern. He has lost the support of virtually all of the state’s Democratic establishment. Top Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly also urged Northam to step down, as did many declared and potential Democratic presidential candidates.

Virginia governors can be removed for “malfeasance in office, corruption, neglect of duty, or other high crime or misdemeanor” under the state constitution, but top Democrats said they don’t believe it will come to that.

Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe predicted that Northam — who served as McAuliffe’s lieutenant governor — will eventually leave office.

“Ralph will do the right thing for the Commonwealth of Virginia,” McAuliffe said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Northam apologized on Friday for appearing in the photograph on his yearbook page. He did not say which costume he was wearing, but said he was “deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo.” On Saturday, though, the governor reversed course and said the picture “is definitely not me.”

While talking with reporters, Northam acknowledged he once used shoe polish to put on blackface as part of a Michael Jackson costume for a 1984 dance contest in Texas, when he was in the Army. Northam said he regrets that he didn’t understand “the harmful legacy of an action like that.”

Asked by a reporter if he could still do Jackson’s famous moonwalk, Northam looked at the floor as if thinking about demonstrating it. His wife put a stop to it, telling him, “Inappropriate circumstances.”