RICHMOND, Va. — Ralph Shearer Northam took the oath of office Saturday as Virginia’s 73rd governor, invoking the state’s “complex” history of both enslavement and patriotic leadership to call for a new “Virginia way” forward.
“This unique heritage endows us with a responsibility to shape the future, to leave this place better than we found it,” said Northam, a 58-year-old Democrat.
A former state senator and lieutenant governor, Northam succeeds his friend and benefactor, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, after leading a wave election last fall that saw Democrats make dramatic gains in the state legislature.
Though his win was powered by Democratic resistance to President Donald Trump, Northam issued a call for civility before a crowd of some 4,000 guests gathered in the cold outside the state’s historic Capitol building.
The crowd included at least nine former governors — Republicans and Democrats — as well as Virginia’s congressional delegation and members of a legislature that, thanks to the recent elections, features a record number of women and greater diversity than ever. In keeping with tradition, the men in ceremony wore dark gray morning suits.
Invoking lessons learned from his parents as he grew up among the isolated fishing villages and farms of the Eastern Shore, Northam nodded to his reputation as a less-than-flashy politician. “It taught me that you don’t have to be loud to lead,” he said.
“It can be hard to find our way in a time when there’s so much shouting, when nasty, shallow tweets take the place of honest debate, and when scoring political points gets in the way of dealing with real problems,” Northam said in his thick country accent.
Calling on lawmakers to refer to their “moral compass,” Northam said it is time to do the main thing McAuliffe failed to do: expand Medicaid to an estimated 400,000 low-income Virginians.
“We’re going in the wrong direction on healthcare in Virginia and America,” said Northam, a pediatric neurologist.
He also called for protections for a woman’s right “to make her own decisions about her health,” stronger gun control and spreading economic prosperity more evenly around the state.
But while his agenda drew heavily from Democratic priorities, Northam, who has a reputation for bipartisanship and once was wooed by the Republican party, conceded that “no one has a monopoly on good ideas” and said working together with all parties would be “the guiding principle of this administration.”
Northam takes over at a moment when Democratic fervor is at a modern high point in Virginia, after elections that remade the clubby General Assembly so that it features the first Latinas as well as its first openly transgender and lesbian members. While November’s blue wave decimated two decades of wide Republican majorities in the House of Delegates, the result is a closely divided chamber — 51 Republicans to 49 Democrats — that will have to work together to get anything done.
Northam’s reputation as a centrist with a deep well of friends on both sides of the aisle gives Virginia a fighting chance to avoid the partisan ills of Washington.
His predecessor, McAuliffe, was hailed for his energy in wooing business to the state but rankled Republicans as the ultimate party operative with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Many Republicans in the General Assembly were offended by McAuliffe’s final state of the commonwealth speech Wednesday night, which called for unity but featured a long list of his own accomplishments as he headed out the door as a possible 2020 presidential contender.
As a result, perhaps no group in Richmond was happier to see Northam take office than the legislature’s Republicans.
“We know Ralph. I can trust Ralph when he gives me his word that he will stick to it,” said Sen. William Stanley, R-Franklin. “I don’t that think we ever had that trust with [McAuliffe]. And so, it’s going to be a breath of fresh air around here even if Ralph Northam is not of the same party and wearing the same color jersey as us on the Republican side. He’s somebody that we know and trust.”
Areas such as criminal justice reform and education priorities offer common ground between the parties, if they can work together. Republicans think Northam’s years as a state Senator and lieutenant governor, as well as his modest temperament, will help.
“He obviously knows that culture, he knows how the legislature works,” said House Speaker M. Kirkland Cox, R-Colonial Heights, who has been meeting regularly with Northam since the Nov. 7 election. “He’s obviously a person that wants to work with you. He’s willing to do things behind the scenes. … He’s just the guy we feel like personality-wise matches up with us.”
Though Northam was sometimes derided on the campaign trail for being soft-spoken and awkward, those qualities are beloved in the state Capitol.
“He’s sort of a low-key, quiet, reserved gentleman,” said House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, a pugnacious debater who often leads the Republican charge on big issues.
Northam has been meeting individually and collectively with all the new Democrats in the House — 16 of them, each one fired up with a sense of mission.