Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) is crafting a plan to rehabilitate his image with African American voters by going on a listening tour, possibly upping the funding to historically black colleges and universities and encouraging legislation to take down Confederate statues.
According to a Monday BuzzFeed News report, Northam is hoping that heavy investment in African American-centric issues will win him back support from leaders like Rev. Al Sharpton who have called on him to resign.
Two weeks ago, a picture surfaced from Northam’s yearbook page of a man in blackface next to one in a Ku Klux Klan robe. Northam’s bungled response and tone-deaf attempts to clean up the scandal furthered his troubles, though he was spared the entire limelight when the next two leaders in the Democratic lines of succession had their own scandals emerge.
