by North Carolina’s political life – and American politics – received a bombshell on Thursday when CNN reported that Mark Robinson, the state’s Republican lieutenant governor, had repeatedly commented on a porn site about the fact that he enjoyed watching pornography with transgender women and said he, “And yes, I’m a ‘perv’ too.”
Robinson’s porn choices wouldn’t be a concern except that he has said that people who “support this mass delusion called transgenderism” want to “turn God’s creation backwards, and make him into a sick image of rebellion to glorify Satan.” He added: “Dear Transgender crowd, you CANNOT transgress God’s creation. Sincerely, Bible Thumper.”
In addition, Robinson is said to have called himself a “black NAZI” and extolled the virtues of slave ownership on the same site, saying: “I wish they’d bring it (slavery) back. I would definitely buy a few.”
Robinson vehemently denied any such comments and told CNN he did not have the account.
The fallout from KFile’s reporting is swift, however. So far, Robinson has shown no willingness to drop out of the race, despite polling showing he’s already trailing Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee for governor. The story is that Robinson, who had previously mentioned Hitler, is likely to lose Stein’s first Jewish governorship in the Old North.
Meanwhile, the Kamala Harris campaign smells blood in the water. On Friday, the campaign released an ad linking Trump and Robinson, including Trump saying “I think you’re better than Martin Luther King,” and showing Robinson saying that abortion is ” killing a child because you are not responsible enough to keep them. your skirt down.” The ad says Trump and Robinson are “wrong for North Carolina.”
In Donald Trump’s Republican Party, apologizing is a sign of weakness and “not supporting” is a sign that one knows how to “fight”. Thom Tillis, the state’s senior senator who has become a consummate dealer in Washington, responded to the news immediately on Twitter/X: “It was a tough day, but we have to stay focused on the races we can win. We need to make sure President Trump wins NC and supports the top GOP candidates running for important NCGA and judicial races. If Harris takes NC, she takes the White House. We cannot allow that to happen.”
In other words, the North Carolina Republican Party — long seen as one of the most competent state parties — chose to stick with Robinson. It was a sign of what the parties of the state as a whole learned from Donald Trump and tried to imitate him. But in doing so, they forgot one key point: Not every candidate can do what Trump does. And now, there is a risk that that amount will cost him the state.
North Carolina’s GOP first took control after Barack Obama won the state in 2008. In 2010, Republicans took back both houses of the legislature and in 2012, took control of the government. They passed a voter ID bill, passing sweeping tax cuts and a bill that would have barred transgender people from using public bathrooms that correspond to the gender they identify with.
That last one showed that Republicans had overplayed their hand and Roy Cooper, a Democrat, won the Republican governor despite the fact that Trump won the state in 2016 and again in 2020.
North Carolinians liked Trump, though. He made Mark Meadows his last chief of staff and made Michael Whatley, the former North Carolina GOP chairman, chairman of the Republican National Committee earlier this year. When it came time to replace Richard Burr, the senator who voted to impeach Trump for his actions on January 6, Trump anointed Ted Budd, who won two years ago.
Like Trump, Robinson burst onto the scene with no previous political experience in 2018 after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, when he denied Greensboro’s efforts to cancel a gun show. The video of him doing so immediately went viral. In 2020, he ran for lieutenant governor and won.
“The race of the lieutenant governor has historically been overlooked,” said John Hood, president of the conservative John William Pope Foundation. The Independent. “There wasn’t a lot of money spent in that race.”
In fact, in 2020, the governor’s race and the Senate race have been heavily focused on. The lieutenant governor’s office gave Robin a national presence and a slide to the Republican nomination for governor.
“If you had a candidate [in the past] with this amount of baggage they all had [problems] on a background check, you didn’t run them for office, you didn’t put them up, no matter how good a speaker they were,” said Jonathan Bridges, a Republican strategist The Independent. “We saw that Donald Trump – a candidate who wasn’t perfect, who had baggage – was able to go in and be president.” So things changed.
Bridges said Republicans thought they didn’t need someone with a sterling record because of Trump’s success. But maybe they took that a little too much.
Now, not only is Robinson behind Stein, but a poll from station WRAL shows that Jeff Jackson, a non-aggressive backbencher, is tied with Dan Bishop, who was the state legislator who wrote the bathroom ban. and as a conference. vote to overturn the results of the election.
This isn’t just a problem in North Carolina, either. In Arizona, Kari Lake is far behind Ruben Gallego in the Senate race after Lake, like Trump, refused to concede when she lost her race for governor in 2022. Almost every group of voters has turned off JD Vance, a running mate Trump, except for the MAGA faithful.
All these situations are not guaranteed to lead to electoral disaster. But in North Carolina, Robinson’s troubles may have been a fatal blow. Trump narrowly won the state in 2016 against Hillary Clinton and narrowly lost it against Joe Biden. The party has since shaped its behavior after Trump in a crucial swing state. And Trump might pay the price for teaching them his best moves.
