A major national progressive group on Thursday denounced Ralph Northam, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, as gutless and racist for his remarks on immigration plunging Democrats into a bitter internecine squabble ahead of statewide elections on Tuesday.

In a Wednesday interview with Norfolk, Virginia, TV news channel WAVY , Northam said he would sign a bill banning so-called sanctuary cities, or municipalities that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities, should any Virginia locality pursue that status in the future.

Northams opponent, Republican Ed Gillespie, has run a series of misleading ads attacking Northam for a vote as lieutenant governor blocking a bill that would have preemptively banned municipalities from adopting these limits though Gillespie himself has acknowledged that no sanctuary cities exist in Virginia as of yet.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday night after an event with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, Northam claimed that he simply opposed preemptively banning sanctuary cities, and that his comments to WAVY were what Ive been saying all along.

The explanation was not enough, however, to assuage Democracy For America, a left-leaning online activism organization based in Burlington, Vermont. In response to what DFA called Northams backtrack on his commitment to standing up for immigrant families, the group declared that it would end any work to directly aid his campaign.

After seeing Northam play directly into the hands of Republicans racist anti-immigrant rhetoric on sanctuary cities, we refuse to be silent any longer and even remotely complicit in the disastrous, racist, and voter-turnout-depressing campaign Ralph Northam appears intent on running, DFA executive director Charles Chamberlain said in a statement.