Procrustes Stretched
This place is nothing without the membership.
wow! Incredible. Can't see a Southern White Conservative Republican doing this:
‘Those days were tough’
From the outset of his rehabilitation, Northam was bombarded with advice – often unsolicited.
Dozens of Virginia politicians were both publicly and privately looking to counsel the governor on how he could make it through. Among those was former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican whose own tenure was plagued by scandal and who publicly argued Northam needed to go on a public apology tour and make plain the deep regret he had.
Northam, however, went for a more private option, following the lead of state Del. Lamont Bagby, who served as the chair of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, a group that called on Northam to resign. Bagby and other caucus members told the governor the way forward “is not vising Black churches and visiting HBCUs” for large public displays of apology, said Bagby, but was instead by making sure he passed legislation and signed budgets that “reflect a desire to positively impact those lives that have been disenfranchised.”
“He had everyone in his ear saying they could help him save his four years,” Bagby recalled. “And I think it is clear the path he chose.”
Northam kicked off his journey out of scandal by signing a bill that established the Virginia African American Advisory Board, a group that was created to advise the governor on how he could better serve Black Virginians. The bill was introduced by Bagby. Later in the year, Northam instituted a plan to get rid of racist language from Virginia law.
“I committed myself and our administration to listening,” Northam told CNN, citing private meetings he had where he “learned a lot more about history than I had known prior to that.” He added: “We really were able to turn a lot of the listening tour into policy.”
“The reality is that this Black oppression is alive and well in 2021, it’s just in a different form,” Northam said, arguing that while he tried to work on equity before the yearbook incident, the scandal “brought it into certainly a much stronger focus.”
Former Northam aides who worked to get the governor through the scandal say while there wasn’t a single moment that convinced them he would turn things around, the governor’s commitment to racial equity provided the office with a guide.
“When he made the commitment to equity, that felt significant because it was a North Star for all of our work and a part of every conversation,” said a former aide, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the difficult time after the scandal broke. “And it felt to me that was something we could control and focus on every single day.”
But I remember George Wallace and his relationship with black voters down south,.
