Northam’s contradictory accounts “led to an evaporation of a lot of trust, especially public trust in the people whose support he would need to be effective, which is when I came out with a statement about it,” Herring said. “But I really wrestled with what to do given what I had done, and talked to my family about it. I talked to a couple of college friends about it.”

A few days later, after an Associated Press reporter emailed specific questions to Herring’s staff about an alleged photo showing Herring in blackface, Herring met with the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus and then issued a statement apologizing for wearing blackface when he dressed up as a rapper in 1980 at a party at the University of Virginia.

“It was a terrible decision. Blackface is always wrong,” Herring said Monday. “And I am ashamed to say that at 19 years old in 1980, I did not know that. I ... learned not long after that how it’s wrong. Why it’s wrong. It is wrong because it is a dehumanization of people of color and a minimization of an oppressive history.”

Herring declined to say if he still thinks Northam should resign.

“The governor has made up his mind,” he said. “He’s decided that he is going to continue on and is doing what he thinks he needs to do.”