The Democratic party of Virginia called for the state’s lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, to resign after two women accused him of sexual assault. Fairfax is one of the top three Democrats in Virginia, all of whom face potentially career-ending allegations of sexual misconduct or racism.
Susan Swecker, the party’s chairwoman, said Fairfax can’t serve effectively because of the allegations. The state party joins a long list of elected officials and Democratic presidential hopefuls who have called for Fairfax’s resignation.
“We believe that allegations of sexual assault must be taken with the utmost seriousness,” Swecker said. “Given the credible nature of the sexual assault claims against Lieutenant Governor Fairfax, it has become clear he can no longer fulfill the duties and responsibilities of his post.”
“While the lieutenant governor deserves due process in this matter, it is in the best interest of the Commonwealth that he goes through this process as a private citizen,” Swecker continued.
A former Duke University classmate said she was raped by Fairfax in a, “premeditated and aggressive” attack in 2000. Another woman said Fairfax forced her to perform oral sex in 2004.
Fairfax has denied both allegations, called them part of a “smear campaign”, and said he won’t step down. Until a week ago, Fairfax was a rising star in the Democratic party, and is only the second African American to ever hold statewide office in Virginia.
At the same time, Governor Ralph Northam made his first public appearance since refusing to resign. Northam spent the week in seclusion after a racist picture on the personal page of his medical school yearbook was discovered.
The picture showed a man in KKK robes and another in blackface. The governor said he was not the man in the picture, but admitted to wearing blackface for a Michael Jackson costume.
A third Virginia politician, the attorney general Mark Herring, has also apologized for wearing blackface in the 1980s when he was 19-years-old at a college party.
Nor has the scandal left Virginia Republicans unscathed. It has emerged that senate majority leader, Tommy Norment, was the managing editor of Virginia Military Institute’s 1968 yearbook, which included photos of students posing in blackface and racist slurs that referred to African Americans, Jews and Asians.
In a separate incident last week, the former secretary of state of Florida resigned for wearing blackface to dress as a Hurricane Katrina victim at a Halloween party in 2005.
