Justin Fairfax

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia’s state government seemed to come unglued Friday as an embattled Gov. Ralph Northam made it clear he won’t resign and the man in line to succeed him was hit with another sexual assault accusation and barraged with demands that he step down too.

Top Democrats, including a number of presidential hopefuls and most of Virginia’s congressional delegation, swiftly and decisively turned against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who would become Virginia’s first black governor if Northam quit.

The twin developments came at the end of an extraordinary week that saw all three of Virginia’s top elected officials — all Democrats — embroiled in potentially career-ending scandals fraught with questions of race, sex and power.

Northam, a year into his four-year term, announced his intention to stay during an afternoon Cabinet meeting, according to a senior official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In so doing, Northam defied practically the entire Democratic Party, which rose up against him after a racist photo on his 1984 medical school yearbook surfaced and he acknowledged wearing blackface in the 1980s.

The governor issued a statement to government employees, saying, “You have placed your trust in me to lead Virginia forward — and I plan to do that.” He also announced more than a dozen appointments to state boards.

Meanwhile, a woman came forward with a statement accusing Fairfax, the lieutenant governor, of attacking her when they were students at Duke University in North Carolina in 2000. The Associated Press is not reporting the details because the allegation has not been corroborated.

Fairfax emphatically denied the new allegation, as he did the first one, leveled earlier this week by California college professor Vanessa Tyson, who said Fairfax forced her to perform oral sex on him at a Boston hotel in 2004.

“It is obvious that a vicious and coordinated smear campaign is being orchestrated against me,” Fairfax said.

Duke campus police have no criminal reports naming Fairfax, university spokesman Michael Schoenfeld said. Durham police spokesman Wil Glenn also said he couldn’t find a report in the department’s system on the 2000 allegation.

Many Democrats who had carefully withheld judgment after the first accusation against Fairfax, saying the matter needed to be investigated, immediately turned against him.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful, immediately called on Fairfax to resign, citing “multiple detailed allegations” that are “deeply troubling.” Another Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, called details of the second woman’s claims “sickening and horrendous” and also called on Fairfax to step down.

Virginia’s Republican House Speaker Kirk Cox said there was little appetite among lawmakers to remove Northam through impeachment, saying resignation “would obviously be less pain for everyone.”