Ralph Northam: The New Dan Malloy

Living in Rhode Island, I found myself living in between the most popular and least popular governors for quite some time.  The Morning Consult releases quarterly polls with approval ratings for the governors of all 50 states. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, has consistently found himself winning the title of most popular governor, while Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy, a Democrat, always came in dead last or close to it.  The most recent approval ratings, released last month, showed Baker with a 72 percent approval rating and Malloy with a 20 percent approval rating.  Only Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, a Republican, had a lower approval rating; with 16 percent of Oklahomans approving of her job performance.

The approval ratings for the first quarter of 2019, likely due out in April, will look a bit different; especially considering the fact that a handful of governors left office either due to term limits or the voters rejecting them.  Four of the five least popular governors left office last year; Fallin faced term limits while Malloy decided to forego running for re-election to a third term in office.  The governorship in Connecticut went to Democrat Ned Lamont while the Oklahoma governorship went to Republican Kevin Stitt; proving that the state’s partisan leanings played more of a factor in the gubernatorial elections than the outgoing incumbents’ unpopularity.  The other two least popular governors, both of whom had approval ratings under 30 percent, lost re-election; although technically, Independent Alaska Governor Bill Walker withdrew from the race two weeks before Election Day.  Although his name remained on the ballot, he threw his support behind the Democratic candidate, former Alaska Senator Mark Begich.  Walker’s endorsement probably served as a noose around Begich’s neck, as Republican candidate Mike Dunleavy became the only Republican to pick up a gubernatorial seat on Election Day 2018.

Of the five least popular governors as of December 2018, only Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, a Republican, remains in office.  While most experts would probably predict Bevin to replace Fallin as the least popular governor in the country, circumstances have changed quite a bit.  Bevin came to the defense of the students at Covington Catholic High School, who became targets of the media mob, for standing idly by and “smirking” as a Native American elder banged a drum in their faces in the vicinity of the March for Life.  Bevin’s support of the Covington kids should help his approval ratings in a red state like Kentucky but he still could have ended up as the most unpopular governor in the United States for the first quarter of 2019…if not for Ralph Northam.

Democratic Virginia Governor Ralph Northam may have had a worse week than I did, unless my mother falling and breaking her shoulder and injuring her ankle as well as persistent computer troubles constitute a good week.  The week began with a debate on a bill sponsored by Democratic Delegate Kathy Tran, known as the “Repeal Act,” that would have essentially allowed for abortion right up to the moment of birth.  When pressed by the House Majority Leader if her bill would have allowed women who have “dilated” to have abortions, Tran answered in the affirmative.  Northam dug himself into a huge hole when he made statements on a radio show in support of Tran’s bill and arguing that severely deformed infants “would be kept comfortable,” assuming the mother actually wanted the infant to live.  The bill ultimately did not go anywhere, since Republicans hold narrow majorities in the Virginia House of Delegates as well as the Virginia Senate.  The aforementioned Morning Consult poll pegged Northam’s approval rating as 47 percent and his approval rating at 25 percent; meaning that 28 percent of Virginians had not made up their mind about Northam; who took office in January 2018.

With two months to go until the next batch of Morning Consult polls come out, Northam’s approval ratings will look a lot worse…but not because of his comments endorsing infanticide.  The website, Big League Politics, dismissed as a “far right website” by critics, released a yearbook page from Northam’s medical school days featuring Northam’s portrait, a short description of his interests, and an abhorrent picture featuring one man dressed in blackface and the other dressed up in a Ku Klux Klan robe.  Considering the fact that the picture was on Northam’s page, it only makes sense to assume that Northam is one of the two guys in the picture.  On Friday night, when the story first broke, Northam issued an apology and said that he would not step down from the governorship.

Northam must have received one of those shovel-ready jobs President Obama kept talking about because he delivered a press conference on Saturday, where he brought a shovel, dug himself a hole, jumped into it, and buried himself in it.  After seeming to acknowledge his presence in the racist photograph just one night earlier, Northam denied that he had appeared in the photo; arguing that he remained committed to clearing his name.  As if his retraction didn’t make him look foolish enough, Northam admitted that he did in fact wear blackface once at a San Antonio event where he dressed up as Michael Jackson and rubbed a small amount of shoe polish on his face to make it look darker.  Figuratively speaking, Northam grabbed a gun and almost shot himself with it after a reporter asked him if he could still do the Moonwalk.  His wife took the gun out of his hands and reminded him that the press conference constituted “inappropriate circumstances” when it came to demonstrating his dancing skills. 

Northam received swift condemnation from the leaders of the Democratic Party, with even his predecessor, Clinton hack Terry McAuliffe, calling on him to resign.  Northam won the Virginia gubernatorial election in 2017 after serving as lieutenant governor for four years under McAuliffe.  Northam won the governors’ race by about eight points, an improvement from McAuliffe’s narrow win four years earlier and Hillary Clinton’s six-point victory over President Trump in the state during the 2016 Presidential race.  Northam beat Republican Ed Gillespie, who almost unseated Democratic Senator Mark Warner during Republicans’ banner year in 2014.  In perhaps the strangest twist of irony, Northam spent the entire general election campaign trying to paint Gillespie, an establishment Republican with ties to the George W. Bush administration, as a racist. 

It did not take long for President Trump to weigh in on the unfolding situation in Virginia, with the President correctly pointing out that had Gillespie actually hired competent people to conduct opposition research on Northam, Gillespie would have won the gubernatorial election by 20 points.  But it makes no sense to focus on the past when Northam’s future remains in jeopardy.  Northam will probably take over the spot formerly held by Dan Malloy as the least popular governor in America. Republicans willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because he painted himself as a “moderate” now hate him because of his comments endorsing infanticide while Democrats hate him because he once dressed up in blackface (or a KKK hood). Initially, the Democrats thought they had nothing to lose in the event of a Northam resignation.  Northam could not run for re-election in 2021 because Virginia forbids its governors from running for more than one consecutive term.  In addition, the separately-elected Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, an African-American Democrat, would have a leg up in the 2021 gubernatorial election because he would have the luxury of running as an incumbent. 

However, Democrats’ dreams of a Governor Fairfax appeared to take a hit when a decade-old sexual assault allegation against Fairfax surfaced. Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, holds the next spot in the gubernatorial line of succession.  While he could have ended up as “the last man standing” if both Northam and Fairfax have to exit stage left, Herring admitted that he too dressed up in blackface at a 1980s party.  It seems like no one can survive the new purity standards imposed by liberals in the wake of the cultural revolution.

So will the Democrats’ disastrous week in Virginia help Republicans this fall?  While most national Republicans have their eyes on next fall, elections set to take place this fall will have important consequences for the next two years in Virginia politics. While Virginians will have to put up with either Northam or Fairfax as their Governor until the 2021 elections, all 100 members of the Virginia House of Delegates and all 40 members of the Virginia Senate will have to run for re-election this fall.  The Democrats nearly picked up the House of Delegates in 2017, reducing the Republicans’ two-thirds majority to a bare majority.  The Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority in the Virginia Senate.  It looks like the courts will make the Democrats’ job a little easier when it comes to taking control of the House of Delegates, since a federal judicial panel found that Virginia Republicans had unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered 11 house districts; a decision that will likely lead to a new map that will only help the Democrats. As I have explained before, mid-decade redistricting has already improved the Democrats’ standing in Virginia’s federal congressional delegation.  While the Democrats might not enjoy another “blue wave” in Virginia along the lines of what happened in the 2017 election, they don’t need lightning to strike twice.  They only need to flip one seat in each chamber while defending all of their seats.  Should the Democrats manage to gain complete control of the Virginia legislature this fall, then the insanely incorrigible “Repeal Act” championed by Northam and Tran will likely become a reality.

Virginia Republicans do have one silver lining to keep in mind.  Malloy, the former Connecticut Governor mentioned at the beginning of this article, served as an albatross around the neck around Democrats in the Connecticut legislature; even as President Trump lost the state by double digits in the 2016 Presidential election, Republicans performed quite well in state legislative elections.  For Malloy’s last two years in office, the Connecticut Senate had an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. If that can happen in a deep blue state like Connecticut, then surely enough Virginia voters will revolt against Northam and the Democrats in the fall.  While Republicans did absolutely terrible in the midterms in Virginia, losing three seats in the House of Representatives and losing the Senate race by double digits, President Trump has a decent approval rating in Virginia; at least according to a Morning Consult poll, which pegged his approval at 43 percent in the Old Dominion. That may sound bad  President Trump has lower approval ratings in many of the rust belt states crucial to his victory in the 2016 Presidential Election. Still, it remains unlikely that President Trump will carry Virginia in the 2020 Presidential Election but never say never.

A tracking poll from The Morning Consult released this week showed that Northam’s approval rating had plummeted to 29 percent from 48 percent before the controversy.  Only when the official gubernatorial approval ratings come out in April will it become clear whether or not Ralph Northam has officially become the new Dan Malloy.