Former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, once mired in scandal over a racist yearbook photo, stepped back into the political spotlight on Tuesday, May 20, to endorse Democrat Jay Jones for attorney general. The endorsement arrives amid renewed scrutiny of Northam’s past remarks on abortion and his controversial blackface scandal.
“There’s no one I trust more to stand up to Trump and Musk than you, Jay. You’ve got my vote,” Northam said in a new campaign ad, seated across from Jones in a diner. He praised Jones’s work as a former assistant attorney general and his support for abortion rights.
As governor, Northam ignited national outrage in 2019 when he defended a late-term abortion bill that critics said allowed infanticide. “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen,” Northam said at the time. “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Only weeks later, a photo emerged from Northam’s medical school yearbook featuring one man in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan hood. Northam admitted he was in the photo, called it “clearly racist and offensive,” but never clarified which costume he wore, nor did he resign, despite bipartisan calls to step down.
Jones, who was a state delegate in 2019 and the youngest black member of the Virginia House of Delegates at the time, alluded to the scandal in a floor speech. “The Black Virginia that is still oppressed by the vestiges of Jim Crow in our legal system … is mocked in yearbook photos year after year after year,” he said.
Despite that veiled rebuke, Jones welcomed Northam’s endorsement again, as he did in 2021 during his unsuccessful primary run for attorney general. Jones now faces Henrico County commonwealth’s attorney Shannon Taylor in the June 17 Democratic primary. The ad backing him will air across Virginia on both TV and digital platforms.
