Gerry Broome/AP Photo
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson at his home in Colfax, North Carolina, November 2020
The nation is learning entirely too much about North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, who currently serves as the state’s lieutenant governor. CNN’s exploration into comments he made on pornography forums over a decade ago, including calling himself a “Black Nazi” and expressing support for slavery, were only the latest of a series of controversial statements about abortion, LGBTQ rights, and many other subjects. His Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, has repeatedly attacked him over these statements.
In light of the CNN story, Republicans have tried to pressure Robinson to drop out, due to the potential negative impact his controversies may have on down-ballot races. But for much of his campaign, Robinson has refused to acknowledge or apologize for any of his comments, even accusing his critics of lying about him. As of now, he has refused to withdraw from the race.
Kamala Harris’s campaign is now running an ad in North Carolina tying Trump’s endorsement and kind words about Robinson to Robinson’s incendiary comments about abortion.
Robinson’s campaign, and the fact that he could ever make it into a position of political power, is representative of an interesting pattern within the modern Republican Party, one in which they can earn fame within the party for incendiary comments but are soon forced to backtrack once they’re in the national spotlight.
According to his campaign website, Robinson was born into a poor family of ten children in Greensboro, raised by a mother who escaped her abusive ex-husband. Before he got into politics, he served in the U.S. Army Reserve and worked in a furniture factory, among other jobs. Being a working-class man of faith without a prior history in politics may have made him appear more relatable to many voters. But it was a viral 2018 public comment he gave to the Greensboro City Council about gun rights that earned him a place in conservative politics.
The comments came in the wake of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and Robinson expressed his staunch support of the Second Amendment. “The criminals are going to hold on to their guns,” Robinson said, referring to the possibility of a crackdown on access to guns. “They’re still going to have them. They’re still going to break in my house. They’re still going to shoot me with them. Guess who is going to be the one that suffers? It’s going to be me.”
His speech was posted on the Facebook page of former North Carolina Rep. Mark Walker, who convinced Robinson to run for political office, said Mac McCorkle, Professor of the Practice in Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.
“Then-Congressman Mark Walker, a white Baptist minister, was credited with pushing Robinson,” McCorkle said, adding that Robinson’s race was seen as an asset. “The Republicans being the party of Jesse Helms in this state, there was a hunger for Republicans to get the racism card off their back.”
The late North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms was a fierce opponent of racial integration with his own history of racism and antisemitism. So for Republicans, electing the state’s first Black lieutenant governor may have seemed like a way to move past that reputation.
But it seems that Robinson has more in common with Helms than Republicans anticipated.
With the North Carolina governor’s race receiving national attention, Robinson is facing significantly more scrutiny.
In addition to his many controversial comments about LGBTQ rights and abortion (including his infamous comment that women seeking an abortion are not responsible enough to keep their “skirt down,” which has been featured in both Stein and Harris ads), Robinson has made some questionable comments on race as well. He has criticized the civil rights movement for destroying Black businesses and schools, and has characterized the 1960 Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins as a socialist plot to undermine capitalism.
“That’s not what you do in a free-market system,” Robinson said in a 2018 podcast. “What you do in a free-market system is you just say, ‘Hey guys, these guys don’t treat people fair. Do not eat here.’”
These beliefs expressed by Robinson are part of a particular brand of Black conservatism, one that holds Black people responsible for rising above racial oppression rather than opposing it through protests or direct action. It ultimately shifts the blame for anti-Black racism from a wider system to Black individuals. And, crucially, it offers validation to white conservatives who hold similar beliefs.
Despite the inflammatory nature of so many of his comments, Robinson was largely able to avoid pushback when he initially ran for lieutenant governor in 2020. He defeated a slew of professional politicians in the Republican primary, including a former congresswoman, the state superintendent of public instruction, and numerous state representatives and mayors. In the general election, he beat his Democratic opponent, former state Rep. Yvonne Lewis Holley, by just over three percentage points.
He was very popular with segments of the Republican base, but the race itself received little attention, McCorkle said. “It was Trump, Biden, and Cal Cunningham and Thom Tillis [for U.S. Senate]. So lieutenant governor [was a] low-information affair. I doubt that many Republicans knew who Mark Robinson was or whether he was Black or white,” McCorkle said.
With the North Carolina governor’s race receiving national attention, Robinson is facing significantly more scrutiny. In his campaign ads, his opponent Josh Stein has mostly relied on using clips of his comments to show voters who Robinson is. He’s even received pushback for less-reported controversies, such as the falsification of documents for the day care he and his wife ran.
But Robinson’s ability to rise inside the party is interesting. It’s become increasingly common for Republican politicians to gain party prominence for controversy, McCorkle said. Before the ascendance of the Tea Party, North Carolina Republicans tried to walk a tightrope between pushing conservative policies while still appearing more moderate, which helped them succeed against Democrats. But that strategy is difficult to maintain with candidates like Robinson, who, perhaps to capture the magic of Trump, double down on incendiary rhetoric.
“I would distinguish Robinson from Trump in the sense that he thinks he has to be outlandish, have a spectacle, say things that liberals are offended by to please the base,” McCorkle said. “But Trump still doesn’t go over certain lines. And you see this the way he dances back on abortion, awkwardly and confusingly. Robinson really goes beyond Trump.”
Robinson may have received support for his candor when he first ran, but it could cost him the governor’s race. Recent polling from FiveThirtyEight shows him behind Stein by five or more percentage points. He has spent much of his time during the campaign having to defend his past comments, rather than focusing on his platform (which includes support for law enforcement and reducing inflation). With the election less than two months away, there’s very little time for him to shift the focus of his campaign away from his controversies.
Maybe the pipeline from viral comments at city council meetings to running for the highest office in a swing state will be closed for people like Robinson in the future. But given the dynamics in the Republican Party, maybe not.
