I don’t mind being an outlier on the blackface issue. If you have baggage, you should make voters aware. If yo don’t, you can expect backlash. He stayed silent after the Charlottesville horror. Giving him a pass on this will mean that when a Republican commits an offense and we complain, we will be viewed as hypocrites. Fairfax is great fun ton Northam because now people will say that he needs an investigation into allegations from years ago to be removed from office. Unless there is Bill Cosby style evidence, Fairfax may survive.

Northam is all about saving his reputation. He wants us to know that he is not a racist. He just left Justin Fairfax off campaign literature by mistake. He changed his story. He read “Roots”. He forgot to update his information on the events of 1619. The Republicans are claiming they just ran over him on a tax bill. I don’t see anything to cheer about.

Edit to add

Here is Charles.Blow

https://mobile.twitter.com/CharlesMBlow/status/1094935757125496832?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

I do a lot of public speaking. I often have to encourage young disenchanted black voters to vote. They are disgusted by the whole system. I say vote BECAUSE you’re disgusted. But with things like Northam, I understand their disgust. Even your liberal “friends” are problematic.

He's just loving it, sees the potential for success of branding the Dem party as a bunch of angry jihadis eating their own:

Flav, see the Times on the Ruben Diaz Sr. story, you'll get it; my underlining:

[....]  in 2011, Mr. Diaz held a rally to oppose same-sex marriage while his gay granddaughter held a counter rally across the street [....]

 Mr. Díaz, a Bronx Democrat now on the City Council, said last week in a Spanish-language radio interview that his colleagues first shunned him because the Council was “controlled by the homosexual community.”Robert Feldman, Mr. Díaz’s personal lawyer since the 1980s, said that his client is not homophobic [.....]

“He’s a very religious Pentecostal minister. That’s his faith,” said Mr. Feldman, who is gay and married.

Mr. Feldman noted that Mr. Díaz has two brothers who are gay, and that he believes that Mr. Díaz is able to compartmentalize his faith and his personal interactions with gay people.

“He sees us as powerful and competent,” Mr. Feldman said.

In the interview at his district office, Mr. Díaz did refer to the power of the gay and lesbian community, but in a less complimentary way.

“The L.G.B.T. community demands that Reverend Díaz resigns!” he said. “Look at how they start demanding and everybody starts roaring. Even my friends are abandoning me. I wish I could have that power, but I don’t.”

He said that his stances against abortion and same-sex marriage have “created an antagonism toward me.”

“My freedom of religion is being taken away,” he said. “So when they talk about tolerance, what exactly are they talking about?” [....]

The LBGT "community" IS pretty powerful in NYC, I would definitely say more so than any Pentecostal "community." (Seems to me the latter is centered in the Bronx, a Caribbean immigrant population.) This is like the opposite of prejudice, this is tribal squabbling about victimology, Victim Olympics stuff. Almost made me laugh, i.e., Us poor poor conservative religious people in NYC, we get no R-E-S-P-E-C-T. The "homosexuals" treat us like dirt.

MHO as a lifelong student of cultural history, this is an example of how our culture and other cultures actually end up changing:

Not forcing it by politics nor law, as those merely reflect what it is at the current time. And attempts to change by politics or law too often provoke counter productive reactions.  Smart conservatives who don't want things to change know this, that's why they've always railed against "Hollywood" and protest things in the arts, humanities and entertainment that try to stretch cultural boundaries.

I was just reminded here how self-deprecation of tribe can be a wonderfully effective political tool in the face of prejudice: