Virginia Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment became the fourth high-level Virginia politician embroiled in controversy Thursday, after The Virginian-Pilot reported that he edited a yearbook filled with racial slurs and photos of students in blackface. The 1968 edition of the Virginia Military Institute’s The Bomb, which Norment edited, reportedly included multiple blackface photos, as well as the words “n***er”, “chink,” and “jap.” Norment declined to address the issue Thursday, telling a reporter that “The only thing I’m talking about today is the budget.” With the Pilot’s report, Norment joins the controversy already surrounding Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring—who admitted Wednesday that he wore blackface in 1980—and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, whose medical school yearbook page contains a photo of one person in blackface and another dressed like the KKK. Virginia’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, also remains mired in controversy after he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2004.
