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Ralph Northam Investigation Ends Without Answers on Racist Photo Was That Ralph Northam in Blackface? An Inquiry Ends Without Answers
(about 4 hours later)
A nearly four-month inquiry into a racist photograph on the medical school yearbook page of Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia was unable to determine whether the governor was in the image, deepening a mystery that threw the state government into chaos in early February. On a Friday evening in February, Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia confessed that he was one of two men in a racist photograph that had been published in a medical school yearbook about 35 years earlier. In a subsequent video, he apologized and promised to do better.
In a 55-page report commissioned by Eastern Virginia Medical School, where the governor earned his medical degree in 1984, outside lawyers wrote that they “could not conclusively determine the identity of either individual depicted in the photograph,” which showed one man dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe and another in blackface. The next afternoon, standing before a throng of reporters, the Democrat suddenly recanted, and insisted that neither man in the picture, which showed one in a Ku Klux Klan robe and another in blackface, was him.
And the investigators were also unable to say where the photograph came from or how it ended up in a yearbook section with Mr. Northam’s name and other pictures of him alone. They added, though, that they had “identified no information that the photograph was placed on Governor Northam’s personal page in error or by any other means not at his direction.” On Wednesday, almost four months after the photograph surfaced and plunged Virginia’s government into turmoil, investigators said they had been unable to determine which of Mr. Northam’s accounts was true.
Mr. Northam, a Democrat whose career and power grew imperiled after the revelation of the photo, spoke with investigators twice and told them that he was “positive” he was not in the photograph. “No one we interviewed told us the governor was in the photograph, and no one could positively state who was in the photograph,” the investigators, hired by Eastern Virginia Medical School, which awarded Mr. Northam his medical degree in 1984 and had been aware of the image for years, wrote in a 55-page report.
On Wednesday, he again denied that he was in the “racist and offensive photo that appears under my name.” The inquiry also did not determine whether the photograph had been placed in error on a page that included Mr. Northam’s name and pictures.
The investigation, conducted by a law firm with close ties to Virginia’s most powerful figures, faced some skepticism on Wednesday. But the report detailed how the gravest crisis of Mr. Northam’s career unfolded behind closed doors, and how early decisions helped shape a “shocking and chaotic” drama that left Virginians flummoxed, the statehouse in shambles and the governor more a punch line than a powerful politician. On Wednesday, the governor again denied that he was in the “racist and offensive photo that appears under my name.”
James Boyd, the president of the Portsmouth chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., said he had “zero trust” in the inquiry and believed that it had been improperly tilted toward Mr. Northam. The firm, he said at the news conference where Eastern Virginia announced the results of the investigation, seemed to be “attorneys for Ralph.” “I know and understand the events of early February and my response to them have caused hurt for many Virginians and for that, I am sorry,” Mr. Northam, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, said in a statement after the report’s release. “I felt it was important to take accountability for the photo’s presence on my page, but rather than providing clarity, I instead deepened pain and confusion.”
The lawyers defended the scope of their inquiry, which included interviews with 52 witnesses, and their findings. Indeed, the turmoil that began with the yearbook picture taxed Mr. Northam’s credibility and also spread throughout Virginia government. In the days that followed Mr. Northam’s shifting explanations, Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax was accused of sexual assault, which he denied, and Attorney General Mark R. Herring acknowledged that he had worn blackface as an undergraduate student. Mr. Fairfax and Mr. Herring, also Democrats, remain in office.
“You can always say we could have interviewed one more, two more, three more, but we interviewed a very representative sample that we felt was a valid sample,” said Richard Cullen, a former state attorney general.
Wednesday’s report was the latest marker in a head-spinning sequence of events that began in early February. Today, every statewide public official who came under scrutiny in a cascading series of scandals — Mr. Northam, Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax and Attorney General Mark R. Herring, all of them Democrats — remains in power.
[“It just went poof.” How Virginia’s leaders withstood the push for them to resign.][“It just went poof.” How Virginia’s leaders withstood the push for them to resign.]
But it was the yearbook photograph on Mr. Northam’s page that kicked off the political crisis. Within hours of its disclosure, Mr. Northam said he was “deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now.” Given that messy line of succession, as well as polls that showed most Virginia voters wanted Mr. Northam to stay, the calls for his resignation from fellow Democrats ebbed. Some even said they regretted making such calls too quickly.
Mr. Northam told investigators that aides had drafted his response and that he had “nothing to do with writing the statement other than reading it over and saying O.K.” Mr. Northam then pledged to dedicate the remainder of his term to focusing on issues of inequity, a vow that members of the state’s Legislative Black Caucus said he has so far showed signs of honoring.
The governor slowly and steadily began resuming a public schedule, but the awkwardness remains, especially in a year of legislative elections. An appearance by the governor is still seen as a risk by other Democrats on the campaign trail, and rearrangements under public pressure have been necessary. Republicans have been in no mood to let the scandals fade away, and on Wednesday, the Republican Party of Virginia renewed its demand that Mr. Northam quit.
“Only one person has confessed to being in the racist photograph, and that person is Ralph Northam,” the party chairman, Jack Wilson, said in a statement.
The black-and-white photograph had been a looming, if largely unknown, threat to Mr. Northam for more than three decades. It was not until Feb. 1, though, with the governor embroiled in a national controversy over abortion rights, that a conservative website published the image and the governor went from a policy dispute to an international maelstrom linked to race.
Mr. Northam’s account of events varied slightly from one interview to another, and from the recollection of his chief of staff, Clark Mercer. But Mr. Northam told investigators — in an account corroborated by Mr. Mercer — that he had immediately wondered whether it was fraudulent. A friend’s urgent review of a yearbook on Eastern Virginia’s campus revealed that it was real.
As the photograph spread quickly online, the governor’s roster of allies dwindled just as fast, and “thousands” of messages began to flood Mr. Northam’s aides.
“That night his closest political allies abandoned him en masse,” Mr. Mercer recounted to investigators. “Not one called him and said ‘Governor, can we walk through this?’ or offered to stand by him.”
The governor’s office, Mr. Mercer said, was “on an island,” and aides prepared three options: a denial, an admission and a condemnation of the photo coupled with a pledge to investigate it. Aides discarded the third choice, Mr. Mercer recalled, because “you can’t equivocate whether you were in the picture or not.”
The group collectively opted for a statement in which Mr. Northam would effectively admit to appearing in the photograph. Aides drafted the statement, which Mr. Northam reviewed and approved.
The statement — in which Mr. Northam said he was “deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now” — contradicted what Mr. Northam was telling his staff, according to the investigators. But a panic, Mr. Mercer said, had seized the governor’s office.
“I wanted to take responsibility for a picture being on my yearbook page and — I hate to say this because I’ve been in the Army and taken care of dying children — but I was shocked,” the governor said, according to the report. “It hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t think through it.”“I wanted to take responsibility for a picture being on my yearbook page and — I hate to say this because I’ve been in the Army and taken care of dying children — but I was shocked,” the governor said, according to the report. “It hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t think through it.”
The strategy backfired, and he faced a rising swell of demands for his resignation after his apparent confession. The next day he retracted his admission, declaring, “It was definitely not me.” As hours passed, investigators said, Mr. Northam became more confident that he was not in the photograph. It was also becoming clear that Mr. Northam’s initial statements, one in writing and another on video, would not quell the outrage. The governor scheduled a news conference that would shadow him for months: He denied being in the photograph, he admitted to once darkening his face for a Michael Jackson costume and, at one moment, he seemed poised to demonstrate his dance skills.
“I know and understand the events of early February and my response to them have caused hurt for many Virginians and for that, I am sorry,” Mr. Northam said in a statement after the report’s release on Wednesday. “I felt it was important to take accountability for the photo’s presence on my page, but rather than providing clarity, I instead deepened pain and confusion.” Mr. Northam and his staff, Mr. Mercer said, “underestimated how strong and how quickly” there would be demands for his resignation.
Indeed, the reversal did not eliminate the firestorm that had come to surround Mr. Northam. Instead, the pressure intensified, and within days the turmoil spread beyond the governor’s office: Mr. Fairfax faced allegations of sexual assault, which he denied, and Mr. Herring admitted to wearing blackface when he was an undergraduate student. Within days, though, scandals were enveloping Mr. Fairfax, Mr. Herring and a powerful Republican senator. The governor retreated from public view and re-emerged slowly. He cannot run for re-election in 2021, and in Richmond, people have become increasingly convinced that he will serve — hobbled as he might be — the balance of his term.
With Mr. Fairfax and Mr. Herring under siege, the clamor that surrounded Mr. Northam, who met with black leaders in private and saw a planned rehabilitation tour provoke opposition, slowly faded. The expectation in Richmond, the Virginia capital, is increasingly that Mr. Northam will serve out the rest of his term, which expires in 2022. He cannot seek re-election. The investigation’s inconclusive outcome may help, observers said, because it did not definitively undermine Mr. Northam’s account. But the investigation, conducted by McGuireWoods, a law firm with close ties to Virginia’s most powerful figures, still faced some skepticism on Wednesday.
While Mr. Northam tried to hold onto power, his alma mater conducted the review that was publicly detailed on Wednesday. Its yearbooks, which journalists tore through in the days after the scandal erupted, showed Ku Klux Klan and Confederate attire. The 1984 yearbook, the publication that featured Mr. Northam, included at least two other images of blackface. James Boyd, the president of the Portsmouth chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., said he had “zero trust” in the inquiry and believed that it had been improperly tilted toward Mr. Northam. The firm, he said at the news conference where Eastern Virginia announced the results of the investigation, seemed to be “attorneys for Ralph.”
After Eastern Virginia, Mr. Northam spent eight years as a military doctor — during which time, he acknowledged, he darkened his face as part of a Michael Jackson costume. The lawyers defended the scope of their inquiry, which included interviews with 52 witnesses, and their findings.
“I look back now and regret that I did not understand the harmful legacy of an action like that,” he said in February. And on Wednesday morning, the medical school’s president, Dr. Richard V. Homan, said that the photograph should not have been included in the yearbook. It had been, he said, a “failure of administrative oversight.”
“Their publication was hurtful, particularly to the African-American community and to our campus community,” Dr. Homan said. “It should never have happened.”