Over the River and Through the Woods

Some schadenfreude in Richmond, Virginia where, what Stacy McCain called a dumpster fire two days ago seems to have spread to a tire dump, threatening two of the Virgian Democrats main constituencies, aggrieved women and aggrieved blacks as Gov. Northam (D) continues to vacillate about resigning after having been found in blackface back in the 80's and his Lieutenant Governor, Justin Fairfax, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman, a fellow Democrat at the 2004 Democratic National convention. Letting Stacy, a Virginia boy, tell the tale: ‘Chaos’ in Virginia: Northam Besieged, Lieutenant Governor Denies Sex Assault

Interesting lead from the Washington Post:

Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax issued a statement early Monday denying a sexual assault allegation that appeared on the same conservative website that posted a racist photograph from Gov. Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook page.

They’re trying to discredit the story by attacking the messenger, Patrick Howley’s Big League Politics, which scooped them on the story:

A woman named Vanessa Tyson, who is a fellow at Stanford University, says that a man who allegedly sexually assaulted her at the 2004 Democratic National Convention is now an office-holder about to get a “very big promotion,” according to a screenshot provided by a tipster. A friend of Tyson’s named Adria Scharf, based in Richmond, Virginia, shared the “heartbreaking” message, which Tyson wrote as a private post.
Tyson is a fellow at California-based Stanford University and professor at California-based Scripps College, which means the alleged sexual assaulter must hold office on the East Coast. Tyson says her alleged attacker won statewide office in 2017.
Justin Fairfax was a John Kerry staffer in 2004, and won an election in 2017 in an East Coast state. Now, he is poised to become governor of Virginia if racist Ralph Northam resigns as Democratic leaders and his own state party demand. . . .
Virginia Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax took to Twitter around 3:00 AM to release a statement confirming the alleged sexual assault victim Vanessa Tyson took her allegations to the Washington Post“more than a year ago,” after which the Washington Post spiked the story.

So, in denying the allegation, Lt. Gov. Fairfax reveals that the Washington Post sat on this story for a full year. But now Northam is in trouble because of his blackface yearbook photo, and the guy who would become governor if Northam resigns is under a cloud of scandal but — plot twist — Virginia Democrats had no idea about the allegations against Fairfax because the Post was complicit in burying Vanessa Tyson’s story.

The New York Times describes the chaos in Richmond:

Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, abandoned by allies in the Democratic Party and besieged by demands that he resign, met with his cabinet Monday morning as state legislators returned to a Capitol thrown into chaos by the governor’s insistence on staying in office despite revelations that a photograph showing people in blackface and Ku Klux Klan robes was displayed on his medical school yearbook page.
But even after meeting Sunday night with a group of his African-American aides, most of whom told him the only way he could clear his name would be to quit, Mr. Northam was giving no indication that he intended to step down.
As Mr. Northam dug in, his onetime allies in the state and national Democratic Party intensified their pleas that he quit, angry and embarrassed at the prospect of being saddled with a governor suddenly compromised by his past. . . .
And the turmoil enveloping the state only grew when, at 2:55 Monday morning, aides to Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who would succeed Mr. Northam were he to resign, issued an extraordinary statement denying an online report that the lieutenant governor had once committed sexual assault.
“He has never assaulted anyone — ever — in any way, shape or form,” said two of Mr. Fairfax’s top staff members. They were responding to an accusation published late Sunday that in 2004 he sexually assaulted a woman while at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Patrick Howley has single-handedly wrecked the Democrat Party in Virginia. Remind me to buy him a beer at CPAC. By the way, I don’t claim to know whether Justin Fairfax is innocent or guilty, but the liberal media didn’t care about such things when it came to Brett Kavanaugh.

Buy him beer for me, and break out the pop corn.

As noted above, the Washington Post kept silent on the Fairfax allegetion after it was reported to them more than a year ago, nominally for lack of corroborating witness. I'll bet they didn't send anyone looking for them, though. It would be nice to think they learned their lesson in the Kavanaugh nomination fight, but this occurred well before then, so it's clear their interest in corroboration is strictly dependent on whose ox is being gored.

Also, via Wombat's In The Mailbox: 02.04.19, Baldilocks at Da Tech Guy offers A Deeper Look At Northam

Since the yearbook photo became public, Republicans and Democrats alike have been calling for Northam’s resignation and some are complaining that people seem to care more about the old photo than about intentional killing of babies. In the case of many Democrats, that’s probably true. But, taking the two issues together, it seems to me that Northam’s blackface/Klan get-ups in 1984 (as opposed to if they were dated, say, 20 years earlier) and his attitude toward living beings newly or almost born are part and parcel of the same mindset – something I’ve been trying to point out all day.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to explain it adequately, but I’ll give it a shot.

To someone like Northam, both blacks and babies in the womb are less than fully human. Therefore, blacks can be caricatured using hated stereotypes/terrorists and are encouraged to kill our offspring. One is merely distasteful and mockable; the other evil and genocidal, but they have the same origin: true racism.

and Twitchy: Guess What Justin Fairfax Was Up To At The Time Of The Alleged Physical Assault

Fairfax said the woman wanted him to meet her mother, but he acknowledged he did not have any documentary evidence to back up his claim that they stayed in touch after the ‘04 sexual encounter at the DNC

He was working as the body man at the time to John Edwards, then the VP nom

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) February 4, 2019