Charlottesville City Councilor Mike Signer tweeted Saturday morning that “With sadness, I concur with the considered sentiments of Virginia’s Legislative Black Caucus and the Democratic Senate Caucus that my friend Governor Northam should step down for the good of the Commonwealth. We need to heal, and to move forward, under Governor @FairfaxJustin.”

On Saturday, before Northam’s press conference, Charlottesville City Councilor Wes Bellamy posted a statement on Facebook saying he too believed Northam should resign.

“I know firsthand what it feels like for something that you said in your younger years to come back and haunt you,” Bellamy wrote, referencing misogynistic and anti-white tweets he wrote between 2009 and 2014 that resurfaced after he was elected in 2016. “It’s tough when people from the outside judge you by the things that you’ve done in your past, or while much younger, and you have since grown and matured to be a different person.”

Bellamy wrote that he considers Northam a friend and believes he’s a good human being, but, given the public outcry, the governor needs to resign to allow Virginia to move forward with racial healing.

“Virginia acknowledges that it has been 400 years since the first group of enslaved Africans stepped foot on the soil of this state,” he wrote. “The city in which I currently govern, Charlottesville, just had white supremacists and KKK members march our streets with the sole intent of creating harm to our city. People as a whole in our nation are working diligently to do the difficult work of addressing the systemic, covert, and overt ills of racism in our society.”

Ruth Serven Smith is a reporter for The Daily Progress. Contact her at (434) 978-7254, rserven@dailyprogress.com or @RuthServen on Twitter.

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.