RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s hard to believe that a scandal involving abortion, multiple instances of politicians wearing blackface, and sexual assault allegations hasn’t resulted in a single resignation. The question on many minds now is: What, if anything, is the state GOP going to do about it?

Gov. Northam, a pediatrician, was asked during a Jan. 30 radio interview to defend state Democrats’ proposed legislation loosening restrictions on late-term abortion. In response, he appeared to endorse infanticide as an option when a child is born during a botched abortion. On Feb. 1, medical-school classmates offended by Mr. Northam’s comment released a photo from the governor’s 1984 yearbook page, showing a young man in blackface next to someone in a KKK outfit. Mr. Northam first acknowledged then denied being one of the men in the photo.

It emerged that Lt. Gov. Fairfax, who would take over following a Northam resignation, had been accused of sexual assault by a college professor and the Washington Post had been investigating the story for months. (Mr. Fairfax has since been accused by a second woman. He denies the allegations and says the encounters were consensual.) Then Mr. Herring, who had initially called for Mr. Northam to step down, announced that he, too, had been photographed in blackface. Suddenly it dawned on Virginia’s political establishment that the fourth in line for the governorship is the Republican speaker of the House of Delegates. Democrats stopped demanding that Messrs. Northam and Fairfax resign.

Republicans don’t appear to have benefited much from the scandal—at least not yet. Virginia is still considered a swing state, and the state GOP narrowly controls both chambers of the General Assembly, but the party hasn’t won a statewide election since 2009, despite some very close races. The Republican Party has also been beset by infighting between moderate and conservative factions, typified by House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor’s stunning 2014 primary loss to tea-party candidate Dave Brat, who was unseated by a Democrat last year.

Former Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who lost the 2013 governor’s race by 56,000 votes, says that the party’s initial response to the scandals was “aggressive and appropriate.” The big obstacle, Mr. Cuccinelli says, is that the “media is cooperatively ignoring as much of the foibles of the Democrat leadership in Virginia as they possibly can.”

Blaming the media for liberal bias may be old hat, but Mr. Cuccinelli has a point about the Post, which is the state’s most influential newspaper. In 2006, incumbent Republican Sen. George Allen referred to a Democratic operative shadowing him on the campaign trail as “macaca.” Mr. Allen claimed he made the word up, but endless speculation it could be a racial slur drove the Washington Post to write approximately 100 articles and editorials about the incident from mid-August through October. Mr. Allen lost. More recently, the sexual-assault claims against Mr. Fairfax were unearthed by a small conservative website, Big League Politics, even as the Post worked on the story.

It will be hard for the media to continue ignoring the racial and sexual scandals once ads start flying in General Assembly elections later this year. So many Democrats went on record calling for resignations, hypocrisy will be an issue. And while the racial angles got most of the attention—the NAACP protested at a fundraiser in April where Mr. Northam was set to appear, leading him to drop out of the event—the abortion extremism is proving to be a sleeper issue.

Much of the rural Democratic base in Virginia is socially conservative, and prominent state Democrats seem worried. Sen. Tim Kaine and former Gov. Terry MacAuliffe were vocal in condemning Mr. Northam and the state’s late-term abortion bill.

Victoria Cobb, president of the Virginia Family Foundation, is pleasantly surprised Republicans are already highlighting the issue. “It has never been the case that abortion in any way has been a chosen campaign issue for most candidates in the Republican Party,” she says. “But they are choosing to highlight the differences between the parties on this because of the extreme nature of where Gov. Northam has led his party.”

Whether the state GOP can capitalize on the Democrats’ woes is an open question. Pete Snyder, a former lieutenant governor candidate and chairman of Republican Ed Gillespie’s unsuccessful 2017 gubernatorial bid against Mr. Northam, says the party is uniting. “This is as peaceful as I’ve seen the Republican party in a long time,” he says. And Mr. Cuccinelli sounds enthusiastic: “The scandal both motivates Republicans and demotivates Democrats.”

What Messrs. Northam and Herring have admitted to would normally end a politician’s career. In the #MeToo era, not many public figures survive accusations like the ones against Mr. Fairfax. If none of it ends up harming Virginia Democrats at the polls, the state GOP’s woes could be a bad omen for the national Republican Party.