119 Facts About Ralph Northam

Ralph Shearer Northam was born on September 13,1959 and is an American physician and politician who served as the 73rd governor of Virginia from 2018 to 2022.

Ralph Northam led the state during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he was the only Governor in the United States who was a licensed doctor.

Ralph Northam was born in the town of Nassawadox on Virginia's Eastern Shore on September 13,1959.

Ralph Northam graduated from Onancock High School, where his class was predominately African American.

Thomas Long Ralph Northam died when Wescott Ralph Northam was only fourteen, and a few years later, the family farm in Modest Town, Virginia, where Wescott had been born, was sold.

Ralph Northam was unaware of his family's slave-owning history until his father conducted research into their ancestry during the time of Northam's gubernatorial campaign.

In high school, Ralph Northam was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" and graduated as salutatorian.

Ralph Northam was a member of his school's basketball and baseball teams.

Ralph Northam graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1981, where he served as president of VMI's honor court and received a bachelor's degree in biology.

Ralph Northam became only the second Governor of Virginia to have graduated from VMI, the first since Westmoreland Davis.

Ralph Northam went on to Eastern Virginia Medical School, earning his Doctor of Medicine in 1984.

Ralph Northam was discharged from the US Army in 1992 at the rank of major, after having completed eight years of service.

Since 1992, Ralph Northam has been a pediatric neurologist at Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters in Norfolk, Virginia.

Ralph Northam first ran for office in 2007 in the 6th Senate district, which includes the Eastern Shore of Virginia; Mathews County, on the Middle Peninsula; and parts of the cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach.

Ralph Northam was re-elected in November 2011, defeating Ben Loyola Jr.

Ralph Northam ran for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia in the 2013 election.

Ralph Northam competed against US Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra for the Democratic nomination.

Ralph Northam was the first Democrat since Tim Kaine in 2001 to be elected Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.

In February 2015, just over a year into his term as lieutenant governor, Ralph Northam confirmed his interest in running for Governor of Virginia in 2017.

Ralph Northam made these intentions official on November 17,2015, via an email to supporters.

Ralph Northam was left with around $1.75 million, which amounted to roughly half of Gillespie's remaining funds.

In October 2017, the Ralph Northam campaign released a small number of flyers omitting Ralph Northam's running-mate for lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax.

Ralph Northam then distanced himself from the ad, re-emphasizing that it was not released by his campaign and saying that it is not one that he would have chosen to run.

Democracy for America had already stopped collecting data for Ralph Northam and had ceased mentioning him in get-out-the-vote calls, due to the Ralph Northam campaign's decision to release LiUNA's flyers omitting Justin Fairfax.

Ralph Northam held campaign rallies with former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden during the general election campaign.

Ralph Northam stated during the campaign that if elected governor, he would place his financial investments into a blind trust, so as to avoid any potential conflicts of interest.

Ralph Northam was elected 73rd Governor of Virginia on November 7,2017, defeating Ed Gillespie in the general election with a larger-than-expected nine-point margin of victory.

Ralph Northam was sworn in as Governor of Virginia at noon on January 13,2018, at the State Capitol.

Ralph Northam became the second Eastern Shore native to serve as Governor of Virginia, after Henry A Wise and the second alumnus of Virginia Military Institute to serve as governor, after Westmoreland Davis.

The Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center denied all claims in the lawsuit, while Ralph Northam called the allegations "disturbing" and directed state agencies to conduct an investigation.

Ralph Northam urged the juvenile center to adopt these recommendations, and the center responded with plans to do so.

Shortly after the news broke, Ralph Northam apologized for appearing in the photo and issued a statement saying:.

Sleep-deprived and ignoring the protests of some staffers, Ralph Northam held a press conference that afternoon, in which he publicly denied that he was either of the men in the photo, but did admit to having "darkened [his] face" with shoe polish as part of a Michael Jackson costume around the same time.

Ralph Northam says that he does not understand why that nickname was bestowed on him.

On March 22,2019, Ralph Northam signed a bill, introduced by the chairman of Virginia's Legislative Black Caucus, Lamont Bagby, establishing the Virginia African American Advisory Board; this board is designed to consist of twenty-one non-legislative citizens appointed by the governor, at least fifteen of whom must be black; additionally, the board includes five members of the governor's cabinet.

On March 12,2020, Ralph Northam declared a state of emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ralph Northam demurred, suggesting that such an order would have been susceptible to legal challenges.

The policy that Ralph Northam enacted through the state budget requiring that landlords apply for rent relief on behalf of their tenants before they can file evictions for nonpayment was credited by The Virginian-Pilot as a primary reason for Virginia's effective distribution of rent relief and was credited by The Washington Post as a primary reason for the state's achievement of a low eviction rate in 2021.

In September 2020, Ralph Northam asked the State Corporation Commission to extend its moratorium on utility cutoffs, which had first been implemented in March.

In May 2020, Ralph Northam instructed the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry to develop new workforce safety standards in response to the pandemic.

In March 2020, Ralph Northam urged localities to reduce their jail populations, so as to lessen the spread of COVID-19 among inmates, and in April, he proposed an amendment to the state budget that would allow the Virginia Department of Corrections to release non-dangerous inmates with remaining sentences of one year or less.

In July 2020, when an outbreak of COVID-19 occurred at the Farmville Detention Center, Ralph Northam's administration responded by twice offering to have the Virginia Department of Health help conduct testing at the facility.

In July 2021, after the COVID-19 vaccine had achieved widespread distribution, Ralph Northam announced that he would urge but not require continued masking in schools.

Ralph Northam was endorsed in the 2017 Democratic gubernatorial primary by the abortion rights group NARAL and its Virginia affiliate.

Ralph Northam has argued for reducing abortion rates through education and expanding access to contraceptives.

Ralph Northam opposes banning abortions after 20 weeks through a state version of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

Ralph Northam's office refuted such criticism as a mischaracterization of his comments.

In 2018, Ralph Northam signed a law requiring that products developed in Virginia use non-animal based testing methods whenever possible; when such methods are not possible, the law requires that the number of animals used in testing be minimized and that the most humane testing method be used.

That same year, Ralph Northam signed a law banning state-funded, medically unnecessary experiments in Virginia that induce unalleviated pain in cats or dogs; this law, which defines "medically unnecessary" experiments as those not done for the benefit of the animal test subjects, is the first of its kind in the United States and passed with unanimous support in the Virginia state legislature.

In 2019, Ralph Northam signed a law classifying the physical abuse of cats and dogs as a felony in Virginia; previously, such abuse had been classified as a misdemeanor in Virginia, unless it resulted in an animal's death; it was not until later that year that federal law made abuse against all kinds of mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles a federal felony.

That same year, Ralph Northam vetoed a bill that would have established a mandatory minimum sentence of six months for the killing or injuring of a police animal.

In 2020, Ralph Northam signed a law revising this to fifteen feet or four times the animal's length, whichever is greater.

In 2020, Ralph Northam signed a law banning the tethering of animals in extreme weather or temperatures ; this law requires that tethered animals be safe from predators.

Ralph Northam proposed an unsuccessful amendment to this bill; his amendment would have expanded the state government's definition of a commercial dog breeder to include any person who breeds dogs for research purposes.

Housing thousands of beagles bred for research purposes, the Cumberland facility is the largest of its kind in the state and would have faced increased regulation had Ralph Northam's amendment been enacted.

Ralph Northam agreed to rescind his support for the amendment, while Marsden expressed a desire to implement a revised approach to the amendment's goals in 2021.

On March 8,2019, Ralph Northam signed a bill repealing a minimum wage exemption that had applied to several jobs historically associated with black workers; a remnant of the Jim Crow era, the exemption had applied to shoe-shiners, ushers, doormen, concession attendants, and theater cashiers.

On March 4,2020, Ralph Northam signed a bill making Virginia the fourth US state and first southern state to ban racial hair discrimination.

Later in the year, during a special legislative session largely devoted to racial justice issues, Ralph Northam signed a bill making it a hate crime in Virginia for someone motivated by bias against any protected group to make a false report to law enforcement.

In early June 2020, Northam announced the removal of Robert E Lee Monument on Richmond's Monument Avenue in response to Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd.

In February 2018, about a month after his inauguration as governor, Ralph Northam struck a deal with the Republican-controlled legislature to raise the felony threshold to $500; in exchange, Ralph Northam gave support to Republican-sponsored legislation that would require criminal defendants seeking parole to first pay full restitution to victims.

On March 4,2020, after Democrats won control of the Virginia state legislature, Ralph Northam signed a bill raising the felony larceny threshold to $1000.

Ralph Northam campaigned on an official end to this practice, while Gillespie wanted to "functionally end" the practice through the use of payment plans.

Virginia's legislature adopted Ralph Northam's proposed budget amendment, which reinstated driver's licenses that had been suspended solely for unpaid debt.

That same month, Ralph Northam signed separate legislation ending the suspension of driver's licenses in Virginia both for non-driving related drug offenses and for theft of motor fuel.

Ralph Northam repealed a mandatory minimum sentence of ten days that Virginia had been imposing on third or subsequent convictions of driving with a suspended license.

Ralph Northam's administration argued that Virginia's parole ban had exacerbated the state's racial inequities, led to an increase in elderly inmates receiving costly medical care at the state's expense, and strained the state's prison capacities.

Ralph Northam continued that effort unsuccessfully for the first two years of his own governorship before achieving results in 2020.

On February 24,2020, Ralph Northam signed bipartisan legislation making all Virginia inmates convicted as juveniles eligible for parole after serving twenty years of their sentences.

In December 2019, Ralph Northam directed the Virginia Department of Corrections to suspend a policy that had allowed strip-searches to be performed on minors during prison visitations.

That same year, Ralph Northam signed a bill tasking the Virginia Department of Corrections with developing accommodations for people with developmental disabilities.

The bill signed by Ralph Northam raises that cap, although only for certain inmates.

The bill signed by Ralph Northam gives anyone convicted by a jury in Virginia of a non-capital offense the option to choose between having their sentence determined by a jury or by a judge.

Under legislation signed by Ralph Northam, anyone is allowed to petition for a writ of actual innocence, regardless of how the petitioner pleaded at trial, petitioners are allowed to pursue writs of actual innocence any number of times through the presentation of new evidence that is either biological or nonbiological, and for any petition to succeed, it need only to be supported by "a preponderance of the evidence".

An additional bill reforming the writs of actual innocence unanimously passed the state legislature in 2020 and was signed by Ralph Northam: it allows private laboratories to test DNA evidence when the Virginia Department of Forensic Science is unable to do so.

In 2020, Ralph Northam signed the Virginia Community Policing Act, which bans the practice of bias-based profiling by Virginia police officers and requires those officers to collect demographic information during all traffic stops or investigatory stops that occur in the state.

Later that year, Ralph Northam responded to the murder of George Floyd by convening a special legislative session largely devoted to criminal justice reform.

Ralph Northam supports increasing Virginia's minimum wage, which at $7.25 an hour, has not surpassed the federally mandated level set in 2009.

Three years later, as a gubernatorial candidate, Ralph Northam proposed that Virginia set its minimum wage at $15 an hour and expressed plans to campaign as governor against Republican state legislators who continued to oppose a higher minimum wage.

Ralph Northam has pointed to the costliness of transportation in rural parts of the state to dispute the notion that a $15 minimum wage is too high for those areas.

Ralph Northam criticized the partial repeal of the car tax under former Governor Jim Gilmore because of its impact on both K-12 and higher education, saying Virginia still has not recovered.

Ralph Northam has called this plan "Get Skilled, Get a Job, Give Back", or "G3" for short, and as governor, he has included G3 as part of his two-year budget proposal, which will be considered in the 2020 legislative session.

Ralph Northam accepts the scientific consensus on climate change and as a candidate for governor vowed to lead efforts to fight climate change.

Ralph Northam pledged, if elected, to bring Virginia into the United States Climate Alliance, a multi-state agreement to uphold greenhouse gas emissions standards.

Ralph Northam has emphasized the negative effects of climate-change-induced sea level rise on Virginia's Tidewater region.

Ralph Northam said he would continue this policy even if the federal government under Donald Trump cut or eliminated funding for the program.

Ralph Northam has offered conditional support for the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, provided that the pipeline's construction is deemed to be environmentally safe.

Ralph Northam has avoided taking a firm stance on other pipelines such as the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Ralph Northam has said that he will seek to implement RGGI spending in future budgets.

In September 2019, Ralph Northam signed an executive order establishing a goal for the commonwealth to produce at least 30 percent of its energy from renewable sources in 10 years, a 23 percent improvement on the amount produced at the time he signed the order.

When Ralph Northam was inaugurated as governor, the family leave policy for executive branch employees in the state of Virginia applied exclusively to employees who had given birth and offered only partial pay.

In June 2018, Ralph Northam signed an executive order extending the policy to apply to both mothers and fathers, including not only biological parents but adoptive and foster parents.

In 2018, Ralph Northam formed a commission to study the possibility of offering child care to state employees in Richmond.

Ralph Northam then made gun control a priority during his administration.

Democrats won control of both chambers in the state legislature during those elections, and in April 2020, Ralph Northam signed a package of five gun control measures into law.

Ralph Northam opposes a single-payer healthcare system in Virginia, preferring that such a plan be run by the federal government, but supports the creation of a state-run public health insurance option.

On February 21,2019, Ralph Northam signed a bipartisan bill raising the smoking age in Virginia from 18 to 21.

Ralph Northam has suggested allowing doulas to be covered by Medicaid in Virginia.

On June 7,2018, Ralph Northam signed a bipartisan bill expanding Medicaid in Virginia.

In February 2017, while serving as lieutenant governor, Ralph Northam cast a tie-breaking vote in the state Senate against a bill to ban sanctuary cities in Virginia.

Ralph Northam said he was "proud to break a tie when Republicans tried to scapegoat immigrants for political gain" and that he was "glad to put a stop to" the bill.

In November 2017, Ralph Northam clarified that while he would veto any bill pre-emptively banning sanctuary cities in Virginia, he would support a ban, if sanctuary cities began appearing in the state.

Ralph Northam vetoed the same legislation again the following year.

Jackson said that because gay marriage was illegal in Virginia at the time, the state should withhold benefits from gay couples serving in its National Guard, while Ralph Northam supported the federal policy.

In 2017, while running for governor, Ralph Northam spoke against the Physical Privacy Act, a bill proposed that year in Virginia, which if passed, would have required people in government facilities to use restrooms corresponding to the gender specified on their original birth certificates.

Ralph Northam called the Physical Privacy Act a "job-killing, prejudicial bill".

Later that same year, before Ralph Northam was elected governor, the Physical Privacy Act was defeated in the state legislature.

Ralph Northam condemned the decision by President Donald Trump to ban transgender service members from the United States military.

Ralph Northam signed the Virginia Values Act into law on April 11,2020.

In 2020, Ralph Northam signed legislation expanding gender identity-related rights and protections in Virginia.

In March 2020, Ralph Northam signed a bipartisan bill that made Virginia the twentieth state and first southern state to ban conversion therapy for minors.

In May 2020, when Democrats had fresh control of Virginia's state legislature, Ralph Northam signed a law decriminalizing marijuana for adult use.

Ralph Northam sent the bill back to the General Assembly, asking for amendments to move the date up to July 2021.

In January 2019, Ralph Northam introduced legislation including bills to end Virginia's photo ID law and a bill to allow absentee "no-excuse" voting to replace the current law which contains limits.

Ralph Northam is proposing new campaign finance limits that would block direct donations from corporations, cap donations at $10,000, and prohibit the personal use of campaign funds by lawmakers.

In October 2019, Ralph Northam announced that he had restored the voting rights and other civil rights of more than 22,000 felons who had completed their sentences.

Ralph Northam belongs to a predominately black Baptist church in Capeville, Virginia and serves as the vice chair of the Fort Monroe Authority, which oversees Fort Monroe, a Civil War historic site where Union General Benjamin Butler sheltered freed slaves.

Ralph Northam owns a 1953 Oldsmobile and a 1971 Chevrolet Corvette.

Ralph Northam is a recreational runner and a competitor in races including the Richmond Road Runners' First Day 5k and the Monument Avenue 10K race.