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“It was definitely not me,” Northam said at an afternoon news conference. “I can tell by looking at it.”
But within hours, three of the state’s most senior Democrats said they had called Northam to tell him to step down.
“We no longer believe he can effectively serve as the governor of Virginia and that he must resign,” Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine and Rep. Robert C. Scott said in a statement.
Addressing reporters, Northam said he had initially acknowledged that it was him in the photograph when it first surfaced Friday because he wanted to “take credit for recognizing that this was a horrific photo that was on my page with my name on it.”
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He said that after talking on the phone with friends and family in an effort to jog their memories about the photograph, he decided to reverse course, because he concluded that it was not him in the racist attire.
However, he revealed that on another occasion he had darkened his face with shoe polish for a Michael Jackson costume in a dance contest in Texas in 1984, when he was a young Army officer.
“I look back now and regret that I did not understand the harmful legacy of an action like that,” he said.
The governor’s refusal to resign plunged Virginia into political turmoil. His own state party has abandoned him, its leaders furious that he had not resigned, according to one high-ranking Virginia Democrat. Top Democratic presidential contenders issued calls for Northam to step down, as did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The governor’s news conference did not appear to change many minds. By the time it concluded, Virginia’s Legislative Black Caucus had reaffirmed its call for the governor to quit.
Later Saturday, L. Douglas Wilder, Virginia’s former governor and the first black elected governor in the United States, also urged Northam to step down.
If Northam does ultimately resign, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who is black, would become the state’s governor.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.