Ralph Northam -- "I am not the person in that photo"

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on Saturday denied being in a racist picture from his 1984 medical-school yearbook and said he wouldn’t step down, statements that intensified calls for his resignation.

The embattled Democrat, who has been in office for a year, said he was mistaken when he said Friday he had appeared in the yearbook photograph, which depicted one person in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan garb.

“In the hours since I made my statement yesterday, I reflected with my family and classmates from the time and affirmed my conclusion that I am not the person in that photo,” he said at a news conference in Richmond.

WSJ

Governors and Democrats will often get the laugh

when they say they never was in some old photograph.

For Governors and Democrats just love to see their face

taking up tremendous acres of the public space.

It happens that a Democrat (a Governor as well)

was tasked with being in a portrait that did not sit well

with voters in his bailiwick, so he was told to quit --

but do you think he'd do it? He said nossir! Not a bit.

For Governors and Democrats don't take things lying down;

to them the honorable thing to do is silly -- like a clown.

To push them from the spotlight takes a Samson-like resolve.

To make them do the right thing mighty struggle does involve.

And speed is of the essence, since no matter what their crime

the indignation dies down given just a few day's time.

The news cycle is pitiless; it quickly wants new fare

and thinks a story one day old is pretty darn threadbare.

And so this crafty Governor (a Democrat so tall)

said the photograph in question was not him at all.

Although at first he said it was, what made him change his mind

was the fact Republicans are famously purblind.

They cannot see the forest for the trees all round about;

they cannot see the hot dog that is served with sauerkraut.

They cannot see the poverty that stalks our land today;

they cannot see that Trump is but a useless stowaway.

So they and all their minions saw that infamous mug shot

with a vision blurred by paranoia and dry rot.

So Democrats and Governors had no need to delay

because the face in question might as well be Doris Day. 

  
The Governor remained convinced that photo wasn't him,
although the features in it showed his vigor and his vim.
He won his case and kept his seat as leader of his state,
which is a marvel some Rembrandt some day should illustrate.

My tale is told, my lute grows mute, and I must hit the road
to mingle with the peasant and the rich man and the toad.
Remember that one photograph is worth a thousand phrases,
most of which suggest Ralph Northam ought to go to blazes.