FLASHBACK: Lt. Gov Justin Fairfax Scrubbed from Campaign Materials by Northam Campaign
Jonathon Moseley
|
Democrat Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, erased his Black running mate Justin Fairfax from campaign materials near the end of his 2017 election campaign. Some of the campaign ‘mailers’ and ‘palm cards’ targeted to union voters were doctored to remove the Black man running with Northam for Lieutenant Governor. Steve Crowder on his ‘Louder with Crowder’ blog reported the incident on October 18, 2017.
This incident takes on new significance in light of Big League Politics’ exclusive revelations on Friday of Northam’s medical school yearbook photograph of two people, one in blackface and the other in a KKK hood. His college nickname, Coonman, also emerged.
Northam first admitted to being in the racial-charged photograph, then denied it. The photograph appeared on a page of the yearbook dedicated only to Northam as a student. Presumably hundreds of people who knew Northam saw the photograph at the time and no one objected that the photograph didn’t belong on his yearbook page.
However, when denying that he was one of the people in the racially-insensitive photograph, Northam stepped into the controversy even deeper. Northam tried to explain that he would have remembered being in that particular photograph because he has learned that it is long, hard work to clean off shoe polish as ‘black face’ from his face. Northam admitted to dressing up in ‘black face’ before, on one occasion to portray Michael Jackson in a ‘moon walking’ dance. But his discussion indicated that he had extensive experience on multiple occasions with removing shoe polish from his face.
Reinforcing President Donald Trump’s accusations of CNN as “fake news,” CNN responded to the breaking news by falsely labeling Democrat Northam as a Republican.
As reported in The Washington Post, on October 19, 2017, union voters were targeted with campaign literature that conspicuously deleted African-American Democrat Justin Fairfax.
“‘It reeks of subtle racism, if not a tone deafness about how we are going to win in November,’ said Quentin James, the founder of Collective PAC that supports black candidates, including Fairfax. ‘Leaving Justin Fairfax off . . . even if it’s only for a small universe of union members, still sends the wrong message.'”
The Post further reported:
“Phillip Thompson, president of the Loudoun County NAACP, said the exclusion of Fairfax from literature reinforces a perception that the Democratic Party sees him as an outsider and is taking the black vote for granted.”
“‘A lot of us feel the Virginia Democratic Party has never been a very inclusive group, and they always kind of marginalize African Americans without providing any grounds for advancement,’ said Thompson. ‘Hillary [Clinton] won the state of Virginia because of the African American, Hispanic and minority vote. . . . Justin is a perfect person to help them do that again, and they still don’t support him.'”
On Monday, appearing on Fox News, former Virginia Delegate Michael Futrell reminded the political world of the incident while calling for Northam to resign. Futrell is himself an African-American Democrat and self-described friend of Justin Fairfax.
Earlier in Northam’s very bad, terrible last week, the governor supported proposed legislation by Delegate Kathy Tran which would have allowed abortions up to the moment of birth. Northam, a pediatrician, tried to justify Tran’s bill by advocating for abortions even after birth in the event of a less-than-perfect baby.
Share: