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Did Ralph Northam Admit He's the Klansman in the Infamous Yearbook Photo?

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  January 14, 2022 12:45 PM

Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is out tomorrow. On January 15 at Noon, the Northam era ends, and Republican Glenn Youngkin will take the reins in the commonwealth. His tenure will be marked by one where he was engulfed in a blackface scandal that almost wrecked his governorship. It did stain it irreparably, especially since he admitted to darkening his face for a Michael Jackson dance competition in Texas. It was in the 1980s. The dominos fell from there. Outgoing Attorney General Mark Herring also admitted to a blackface incident during his college days. Justin Fairfax, the lieutenant governor, was slapped with two rape allegations. Only a Democrat could survive all of this—and they did. Northam refused to resign. Even when his medical yearbook photos surfaced showing a man in blackface and another in full Ku Klux Klan regalia—Northam stood his ground. 

We’ve long suspected that Northam was the Klansman. This incident, which was reported in early 2019, was a train wreck. First, Northam admitted he was in the photo. Then, he said he wasn’t, though he was the one who picked his photos for his yearbook page. Now, Northam says he’s 99 percent sure who the blackface dude is in the picture. You simply cannot make this up (via Virginia Pilot):

Gov. Ralph Northam told The Washington Post that he is “99% sure” of the identity of the man who donned blackface in a photograph included on his medical school yearbook page ? a discovery that nearly derailed his governorship in 2019.

In a statement provided to The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press, Northam’s office on Tuesday declined to name the man he believes wore blackface in the photo, which ran on Northam’s page in a 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook.

But the governor told the Post in an article on Sunday that the man also attended the Norfolk medical school and has a name that’s alphabetically “very close to mine.”

“He’s been talked to,” Northam said in the recent exit interview with the Post about his four-year term. The man “was also in that medical school class,” he said.

The Post story did not explain how Northam is so sure of the man’s identity, given that the governor maintains he wasn’t in the picture himself. Northam initially apologized for appearing in the photo “in a costume that is clearly racist and offensive” but later said he was not in the picture.

So, was this a backdoor admission that he’s the man wearing the Klan garb? Did this man think he could moonwalk out of office without us noticing? Evidently, as he’s out of the governor’s mansion in less than 24 hours.