Trump backed Robinson in N.C. The scandal-plagued Republican could hurt him there now.
Republicans in North Carolina have abandoned all hope of winning the governor’s race or of trying to clean up their nominee’s tainted image. But the scandal surrounding Mark Robinson is only intensifying the presidential candidates fight for the southern swing state, where Donald Trump is scheduled to campaign on Saturday.
And Robinson’s drama sure isn’t helping anything.
While prominent GOP officials in the state condemned Robinson’s old posts on an online pornography forum — and essentially said flipping the governor’s mansion is a lost cause — Trump and his team have so far stayed mum on the topic, as the former president attempts to quietly distance himself from a candidate he has previously praised and featured on stages.
Kamala Harris’ campaign, meanwhile, wasted no time releasing an ad on Friday tying Trump to the embattled candidate for governor, a message the vice president’s team is expected to hammer in the coming weeks.
With North Carolina a critical state for Trump to win — and polls showing him and Harris now essentially tied there — the two campaigns see any boost as a gift, however marginal the impact.
“Anything that affects a couple thousand votes could be a huge deal. You’re talking to someone who lost by 10,000 votes out of 4.6 million,” said former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, who narrowly lost his reelection bid in 2016 as Trump carried the state.
But as McCrory noted, North Carolina is a state where voters don’t mind splitting tickets, which happened when Democrats won the governor’s office during both the last two presidential elections, despite Trump prevailing there. Trump and his team are counting on them to do so again, as he finds himself locked into a close race with Harris in the state where he received his slimmest margin of victory in 2020: 1.5 points.
Before Robinson’s latest scandal, Trump had embraced him as a new populist star in conservative politics, calling him a “friend,” “one of the hottest politicians in the United States of America” and “better than Martin Luther King.” The lieutenant governor was given a speaking slot during the Republican convention in Milwaukee and spoke at Trump’s Aug. 14 rally in Asheville as well as one in March, when he received the former president’s endorsement in the GOP primary. Trump has not rescinded the endorsement.
“This is partially a problem of his making. Trump did not need to endorse,” said Doug Heye, a former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee who hails from the state. “He chose to.”
“If this is why he loses,” Heye continued, “it’s sort of like Kramer wearing the very pants he's trying to return.”
Despite Republican operatives in the state privately acknowledging that there is no real fight left to be fought on behalf of Robinson, many maintain that Trump can still win the state and that the latest scandal will have more of an impact on state legislative and other down-ballot races than on voters’ presidential picks.
“Reverse coattails are a fiction dreamed up by Clinton and Biden staffers looking to blame someone other than themselves for losing North Carolina in ‘16 and ‘20,” said Jonathan Felts, a Republican consultant in the state, who said Trump “remains in a strong position to win” there and that his economic message resonates with a wide range of people, including rural voters. “Harris is scared of rural North Carolina because she has no good answers on inflation, gas prices and the disaster that is the Southern border on her watch. And that’s why Trump wins again.”
Robinson is not scheduled to appear with Trump on Saturday as he holds a rally in Wilmington. But if Democrats have anything to do with it, he’ll still be on everyone’s mind. On Thursday, the Harris campaign released a new ad tying Trump to Robinson and focusing not on his latest scandal, but on Robinson’s remarks about abortion — including a video of him saying women get abortions “because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.” The ad also interspersed clips of Trump praising Robinson.
The Harris campaign believes the anti-abortion messaging from Robinson is more damaging for him than aspects of his other recent scandals — which have been extensively covered by local and national media — and may not actually take out paid media calling additional attention to Robinson’s comments from online porn sites, according to a person with knowledge of the strategy granted anonymity to discuss it.
Trump and Robinson’s campaigns declined to comment.
Long before Thursday’s report from CNN, Robinson had been the subject of a number of unflattering stories over his remarks about women, LGBTQ+ people, Jewish people, Muslim people and others. He was urged on by top state GOP officials in the Republican primary over other more traditional Republicans without so much personal baggage.
But Robinson was already wildly popular with the GOP electorate, having emerged as a star on the right after a 2018 video went viral of him speaking about gun rights at a Greensboro City Council meeting. Efforts to oppose him in the primary failed to gain traction. While Republican leaders in the state claimed not to know the full scope of Robinson’s vulnerabilities, including his extensive online posts, they were well aware that damaging information could come out about him, according to multiple people closely involved in Republican politics there.
“Everyone who wanted to know knew,” McCrory said of there being compromising information about Robinson available publicly. “It was a ticking time bomb, and the fuse has been burning for a long time.”
As more information emerged about Robinson in recent days, national Republicans have been consumed by the details — and increasingly concerned about the implications for the presidential race.
“The only people voting for Mark Robinson are the Republican-or-die folks,” said Oscar Brock, the RNC national committeeman from Tennessee. “He’s going to get creamed. He will be drawing no additional voters to the ballot.
“Between the enthusiasm growing for Harris and dampened Republican enthusiasm because of Mark Robinson, this could have an effect.”
