Several thoughts:
Northam did something stupid, even in the context of the 1980s. As my mother says, we all climb Fool's Hill at some point. Some of us come back down. Others don't. Based on his life after college, Northam seems to be one of the former, with the misfortune of a photographic record of his long-ago time on the hill.
How nobody noticed this in the intervening 35 or so years, I don't know. As others have posted, Republican opponent research was tremendously lacking.
Add this to the growing list of mainstream media screw-ups. CNN calls him a Republican, because that fits their pre-conceived notion that no Democrat could possibly have done something like this at any time in his life. Other Democrats come to his defense.
Can you imagine the outcry if Northam were in fact a conservative Republican? It would be all Northam all the time. Deafening and never-ending. But as it is, journalistic mistakes are lightly touched, if they're acknowledged at all. Logical inconsistencies are let lie, and all the cameras and microphones are pointing in other more confirming directions..
Add this to the Catholic kid in the MAGA hat, the thug who provoked a stoic Native American, showing us all how mean and nasty conservative kids have been brainwashed. Except it turns out he was the bullied one, and handled it with class far beyond his years. And the sweet irony is that what brought all this to light is a video shot by one of the most radical left groups in the country.
Or the Empire actor who was mugged in Chicago by racist homophobes wearing MAGA hats and shouting slurs and "MAGA Country". Except that it now looks like it didn't happen that way....that was just what reporters wanted to have happened. The mugging was bad, and the perps deserve to be severely punished. But even the victim is backing away from the more political parts of the narrative, and decrying "inaccuracies in reporting."
On abortion in general, I feel strongly both ways, and actually think SCOTUS got it right in the initial ruling. Before three months strikes me as the right dividing line. Rape, incest, life of the mother, fine. But Northam's advocacy of third trimester, when the child is actually viable (I have a great nephew who was born at 6 months)....I just don't know how anybody can not see that as murder.
In fact, we often do. If a third party kills a pregnant woman, the killer is often charged with two murders -- the mother and the unborn child. So it's "control over her body" if the mother willingly contracts for the death of a six-month fetus, but murder if somebody else does it?
The mental gymnastics on that are mind-boggling, and I'm no longer even a bit surprised that Northam and other proponents aren't called out to reconcile the inconsistency.