Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
A spirit that is not afraid

OPINION | Dems shouldn’t support Northam after racist photo

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, with his wife Pam at his side, said at a news conference in the Executive Mansion on Saturday, Feb. 2, 2019, that he is not the person in the racist photo in the EVMS yearbook and he will not resign. (Steve Earley/Virginian Pilot/TNS)
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, with his wife Pam at his side, said at a news conference in the Executive Mansion on Saturday, Feb. 2, 2019, that he is not the person in the racist photo in the EVMS yearbook and he will not resign. (Steve Earley/Virginian Pilot/TNS)

A poll released by Morning Consult on Monday shows that a majority of Democrats still support Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, after a photo surfaced of his medical school yearbook page showing one person in blackface and another in a KKK hood.

Upon the surfacing of the photo, Northam admitted that he was one of the people in the photo. 

However, the next day he claimed he wasn’t in the photo, but that he has worn blackface before while impersonating Michael Jackson at a dance competition.

Additionally, after these yearbook photos surfaced, Northam’s yearbook page from Virginia Military Institute also surfaced. The page showed that one of his nicknames was “coonman.”

Northam said that he didn’t know why people called him that.

Northam then claimed that he didn’t know the photo was in his med school yearbook and didn’t know how it got there.

Though, a yearbook staffer explained to CNN why it’s very unlikely that he didn’t know the photo was in there.

In the interview, Dr. William Elwood said that photos for personal yearbook pages were chosen by the individual students and submitted to the yearbook staff in a signed envelope with their name on it.

Elwood directly refuted the narrative that the photo may have been chosen at random by the yearbook staff.

Furthermore, Elwood said that the envelopes were kept in a locked room that was only unlocked when someone from the yearbook staff needed access to it.

Elwood also said that it’s very unlikely that someone submitted the photos for Northam, to his knowledge, no one has ever complained about a photo being on the wrong page. Overall, among all Virginia voters, Northam’s net approval ratings dropped 41 percentage points. Among Democrats, his approval rating dropped from 70 percent to 50 percent. Among independents, it dropped from 42 percent to 20 percent. And among Republicans, it dropped from 31 percent to 15 percent.

All this is rich coming from the candidate who tried his hardest to paint his opponent, Ed Gillespie, as a racist during the 2017 gubernatorial election.

Good on the Democrats who have called out Northam, even if it is just posturing for their presidential campaigns.

Michael Jones is a senior in business at Auburn and contributes to The College Fix, a conservative blog and the Lone Conservative.


Share and discuss “OPINION | Dems shouldn’t support Northam after racist photo” on social media.