Second Justin Fairfax accuser comes forward, alleges rape

Mr Fairfax, 39, said in a statement to U.S. media: "I deny this latest unsubstantiated allegation".

In analyzing the allegation that Virginia's Lieutenant Governor, Justin Fairfax, committed sexual assault in 2004, I've argued that, in the absence of corroborating evidence, Fairfax's denial should be credited, or at least should keep him in office.

"It is clear to me that he can no longer effectively serve the people of Virginia as Lieutenant Governor".

Ralph Northam (D) just won't resign, no matter how many of his fellow Democrats call for him to do so.

The nearly exponential blackface scandal ensnaring the state's top Democratic leadership has now reached the upper echelons of the Old Dominion's Republican Party. "Watson is reluctantly coming forward out of a strong sense of civic duty and her belief that those seeking or serving in public office should be of the highest character", Watson's lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, said Friday.

Fairfax denied the newest claim, labeling it "demonstrably false". "I call for his immediate resignation", said McAuliffe on Twitter.

Gov. Ralph Northam told his top staff that he will not resign over the racist photo controversy despite calls from both sides of the aisle to step down, according to a senior official within the governor's administration.

Another Virginia Democrat, Representative Jennifer Wexton, also said Mr Fairfax "must resign". He went on to say that "a vicious and coordinated smear campaign is being orchestrated against me". Among the pictures on Northam's page is one in which a man in blackface is standing next to another in a Ku Klux Klan costume. But he did volunteer that he once put shoe polish on his face to dress up like Michael Jackson for a dance contest on a separate occasion.

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring said earlier this week that he wore brown makeup to a college party in 1980 because he wanted to look like rappers he listened to, specifically mentioning Kurtis Blow. On Thursday local press reported the Republican senate majority leader, Tommy Norment, had been the managing editor of a 1968 yearbook containing several photos of students posing in blackface and racist slurs that referred to African Americans, Jews and Asians.

The Virginia GOP didn't hesitate to point out that the mild reaction amounted to what the party described as a "hall pass". A former boyfriend of Tyson's says, in essence, that she would not consensually have performed the act Fairfax admits she performed on him - oral sex.

As the reports of Fairfax's second accuser filtered through Congress, multiple Democratic lawmakers called for his resignation. Sen.

"Senator Norment has emphatically condemned the racist and abhorrent photos in the yearbook, as do I", said Republican House Speaker Kirk Cox. Northam apologized for the photo, but denied he was in it.