Andrew Cuomo’s fall from grace, which has him saying today that he will step down as governor of New York later this month, brings to mind Ralph Northam, and how he somehow avoided a similar fate.
It’s mind-boggling, two and a half years later, that Northam even survived that first weekend, much less will finish out his term in five months.
Democrats in Richmond and D.C. fell over themselves to call for Northam’s resignation in the wake of the surfacing of a medical school yearbook page that featured a photo of two men in blackface and a KKK getup.
Northam, you may remember, at first apologized for being in the photo, before recanting, then offering, for some reason, to show off his moonwalking skills to reporters at a bizarre presser.
What was missing in 2019 with Northam: any teeth to the calls from fellow Democrats that he resign.
Democrats in New York, to their credit, did their due diligence. The attorney general who led the investigation into alleged sexual harassment by Cuomo is a Democrat, Letitia James, and upon release of her damning report, Democrats in the New York legislature began drafting articles of impeachment.
Democrats in Virginia, for their part, back in 2019, circled the wagons, and the only thing you can say as to why there is, they had their eyes on the next election.
The fallout didn’t impact the 2019 General Assembly elections – in fact, Democrats actually made gains in both the House and Senate, to the point that they now control both houses, so, kudos there.
Joe Biden, then, won the Commonwealth in 2020 by a comfortable 10-point margin over Donald Trump, as Mark Warner easily won a third term representing the state in the U.S. Senate.
The 2021 cycle isn’t looking to be as smooth sailing at the moment, with Democrat Terry McAuliffe, running for a second term as governor, up marginally on Trump acolyte Glenn Youngkin, but even with the polls tight now, it would be a massive upset if Youngkin were to pull off the win in November, and carry the rest of the GOP state ticket and a House majority along with him.
So, looks like the Democrats’ strategy of pretending that the blackface scandal never happened worked out for them politically.
Morally, now, that’s another story.
Story by Chris Graham
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