Ralph Northam, who said ‘physicians and the mother’ could decide if a delivered baby should live, praised Jay Jones for his stance on abortion
Former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D.), famous for wearing either blackface or a Ku Klux Klan hood, reemerged Tuesday in a campaign ad for Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones (D.).
“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 the ad, sitting across from Jones inside a diner. “You’ve been an assistant attorney general and protected abortion rights.”
Northam, however, has a contentious history with abortion. While supporting a 40-week abortion bill as governor in January 2019, Northam said the law would allow an abortion to take place after an infant’s birth.
“If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. 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,” Northam said.
But the former governor is perhaps better known for a controversial image of him that surfaced the next month. Northam apologized in February 2019 for appearing in a medical school yearbook photo showing one person in blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood, calling it “clearly racist and offensive”—but he refused to say which was him. He also refused to resign after multiple prominent Democrats called on him to step down and finished his term after vowing to regain the trust of his constituents.
Northam also endorsed Jones in his 2021 bid for attorney general over the Democratic incumbent, Mark Herring, who endured his own blackface scandal. Herring defeated Jones in the primary but lost to Republican Jason Miyares in the general election.
Just weeks after the blackface controversies surfaced, Jones, who at the time was the youngest black Virginia delegate, took a veiled shot at Northam during a floor speech.
“The Black Virginia that is still oppressed by the vestiges of Jim Crow in our legal system, that fears law enforcement, is mocked in yearbook photos year after year after year, and looks skeptically at white Virginia because of generations past,” Jones said in February 2019.
The commercial for Jones, who resigned from his post as a delegate in 2021, is backed by a six-figure ad buy and will air on television in Richmond, Norfolk, and Roanoke and on streaming services statewide, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. He will face Henrico County commonwealth’s attorney Shannon Taylor in the Democratic primary on June 17.
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