CHARLOTTE \u2014 North Carolina Republicans were in a panic last week as CNN prepared to drop a devastating story about their nominee for governor, Mark Robinson. Some sought help from the man who had supercharged Robinson\u2019s candidacy: Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
A member of Robinson\u2019s own team asked the Trump campaign for help persuading their boss to drop out, according to a Trump ally with knowledge of the exchange. A consultant close to state Senate President Phil Berger (R) called as well, according to the ally and another Republican with knowledge of the conversation, asking whether Trump would personally urge Robinson to exit the race. Robinson had indicated that he might listen to Trump, two other people familiar with the matter said.<\/p>\n
The response from Trumpworld: And then what? Overseas and military ballots were due to be sent out the following day, Sept. 20. It was too late to remove Robinson\u2019s name from the ballot. And who did they have lined up to replace him who would campaign on this message: Cast your vote for Mark Robinson, and that vote will count for me?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was dead silence,\u201d said the Trump ally, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. \u201cNobody was going to be willing to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
CNN upended the governor\u2019s race nine days ago with new reporting tying Robinson to an old account on an obscure online porn forum. The user called himself a \u201cblack NAZI,\u201d praised Adolf Hitler\u2019s book \u201cMein Kampf,\u201d expressed support for bringing back slavery and described supposed extramarital sexual exploits in graphic detail. Robinson vehemently denied that the posts were his, but the allegations were a crushing blow to his campaign against Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein.<\/p>\n
Robinson has pressed on through the scandal so far, which now threatens GOP prospects up and down the ballot in a critical battleground state. Critics say he is a problem of the party\u2019s own making \u2014 a charismatic outsider whom Republicans in North Carolina and beyond elevated despite a long record of inflammatory comments made in full public view. He was beloved by the base and is Black \u2014 an enticing prospect for a party not known for its diversity, some Republicans said.<\/p>\n
Top Republicans had long championed him or enabled him. Trump promised to endorse Robinson early in the primary. National party leaders declined to intervene against him. GOP voters delivered a landslide primary win. Finally, Trump shrugged off a chance to condemn Robinson even after the porn account scandal, telling reporters Thursday, \u201cI don\u2019t know the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robinson continues to tie himself to the Republican presidential nominee, saying in a statement that \u201cPresident Trump and myself are barnstorming North Carolina taking the problems of our state seriously.\u201d He dismissed other Republicans\u2019 criticism, adding, \u201cThere\u2019s too much at stake in this election for the voters to worry about mindless chatter from defeated politicians from yesteryear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt made no mention of Robinson in a statement for this report. \u201cVoters in North Carolina are going to reelect President Trump,\u201d she said, citing his campaign\u2019s economic and national security themes.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s aides never took the pleas to help force Robinson out to the former president. They didn\u2019t have to. \u201cHe was like, \u2018I\u2019m not getting in the middle of that,\u2019\u201d the Trump ally said.<\/p>\n
This was not a failure to vet their candidate, critics said. It was a conscious decision to look away.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe leaders of the state Republican Party did turn a blind eye to his very apparent weaknesses because he brought a new diverse and dynamic voice to the party,\u201d said Republican Pat McCrory, a former North Carolina governor.<\/p>\n
Robinson\u2019s fast-track journey to the GOP nomination solidified 15 months ago with an off-the-cuff comment from Trump.<\/p>\n
The former president was in Greensboro, N.C., to deliver the keynote speech at the state Republican convention. Trump met with state party luminaries backstage, but Robinson stood out. \u201cThey hit it off,\u201d recalled the Trump ally.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to endorse Mark,\u201d Trump said from the lectern that evening, shocking his own team as much as the rest of the room. \u201cBut I\u2019m not going to tell you about it tonight, okay? We\u2019ll save it for another time. But you can count on it, Mark. Congratulations. Great job.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments terrified those who knew that Robinson carried baggage, including a long list of inflammatory statements about abortion rights, transgender people, women and Jews. Trump\u2019s popularity within the GOP base would make his endorsement virtually impossible to overcome, leaving other Republicans powerless to air the risks he posed.<\/p>\n
By that point, Robinson was a rising Republican star with proven abilities as a public speaker. It started with a speech in 2018 that went viral and put him on the radar of party activists. The city of Greensboro was thinking about canceling a gun show after the mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and Robinson, a longtime factory worker, was outraged. \u201cI\u2019m a law-abiding citizen who\u2019s never shot anybody!\u201d he said at a city council meeting.<\/p>\n
For years, Robinson had vented about politics on Facebook, railing against Democrats and posting homemade memes. He suddenly had a bigger platform. The National Rifle Association put him in a commercial and gave him a speaking slot at its Dallas convention.<\/p>\n
He launched a shoestring campaign for lieutenant governor after cold-calling political consultants and enlisting a young man just out of college to serve as his top adviser. The blue-collar worker who said he grew up amid poverty, alcoholism and abuse \u2014 and at multiple points declared bankruptcy \u2014 trounced other GOP candidates with political experience and more money before winning the general election.<\/p>\n
He became a fixture at conservative conferences, giving fiery speeches around the country. And he caught the eye of Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s the hottest guy in politics,\u201d Trump declared at the Faith and Freedom Coalition\u2019s 2022 \u201cRoad to Majority\u201d conference in Nashville.<\/p>\n
At the same time, much of Robinson\u2019s baggage was in plain sight on his Facebook page. He called school shooting survivors \u201cmedia prosti-tots\u201d; mocked actresses for wearing \u201cwhore dresses to protest sexual harassment\u201d; used antisemitic tropes and railed against a movie hero he said was created by a Jewish person to \u201cpull the shekels\u201d out of Black people\u2019s pockets; and predicted that acceptance of homosexuality would lead to pedophilia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality \u2014 any of that filth,\u201d he told a church congregation in 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd yes I called it filth,\u201d he added forcefully.<\/p>\n
Still, top Republicans in North Carolina embraced Robinson \u2014 the state\u2019s first Black lieutenant governor \u2014 as the future of their party. Robinson announced his bid for governor in the spring of 2023 with Berger, the powerful Republican leader of the state Senate, joining him onstage.<\/p>\n
Republicans around Robinson recalled periodic chatter that more damaging information might surface. \u201cThere were always rumors circulating,\u201d said one person close to the Robinson campaign, some of them demonstrably false and some of them harder to assess. \u201cWe were like, Jesus, I hope that\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the porn site posts were never part of that chatter, the person said.<\/p>\n
Some Republicans tried to warn the party that nominating Robinson for what could be the most competitive governor\u2019s race of 2024 would backfire. Bill Graham, a lawyer and millionaire venture capitalist who challenged Robinson in the primary, said he made that case to the Republican Governors Association and jumped into the race in October 2023 under the impression that there would be major third party spending to sideline Robinson. The RGA sought input for a potential team, according to Graham\u2019s chief strategist, Paul Shumaker.<\/p>\n
Courtney Alexander, a spokeswoman for the RGA, said in a statement the group met with all the GOP candidates and \u201chad no involvement in the North Carolina primary.\u201d The RGA had concerns about Robinson but thought he would win the primary no matter what, according to a person familiar with group\u2019s thinking, who called the notion that any of Robinson\u2019s opponents could have prevailed \u201crevisionist history.\u201d<\/p>\n
GOP operatives laid plans in fall of 2023 for a large ad campaign against Robinson. \u201cThere was universal concern from Washington all the way down to Charlotte that this guy was going to be an electoral disaster,\u201d said a person involved in the plans.<\/p>\n
But some eventually concluded that Robinson would be impossible to beat, the person said. The third-party spending effort was shelved.<\/p>\n
Republicans dug through Robinson\u2019s past and found all kinds of offensive comments they tried to use against him in the primary. Graham ran attack ads accusing Robinson of \u201cdemeaning women\u201d and \u201cdefending sexual predators.\u201d Other GOP challengers \u2014 including state treasurer Dale Folwell and former Congressman Mark Walker \u2014 were harshly critical, too.<\/p>\n
None could come close to Robinson\u2019s star power or following within the GOP base.<\/p>\n
Republicans did vulnerability studies on Robinson, but multiple people familiar with GOP vetting of Robinson said it did not surface the porn forum posts. Robinson beat his closest primary opponent by 45 points.<\/p>\n
Folwell said an interview that Robinson was \u201cselected by former president Trump\u201d and other party officials who elevated him. Those officials and their consultants \u201cdid know, should have known or,\u201d he added, \u201cdidn\u2019t want to know\u201d about Robinson\u2019s flaws.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe party I joined nearly 50 years ago was based on conservatism, common sense, courtesy, humanity, humility and ethics,\u201d he said, lamenting \u201ccounterfeit conservatives like Mark Robinson who think they can build our party by telling people who to hate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even Robinson\u2019s critics acknowledge that he was politically talented. \u201cHe was probably one of the most effective, dogmatic, dangerous populist speakers that I\u2019ve ever seen in my political career,\u201d said McCrory, the former GOP governor.<\/p>\n
For a time, it seemed to Republicans that a strong night for Trump in North Carolina could pull Robinson over the finish line. Robinson tailored his message for the general election, leaning into economic issues. Republicans tested some of Robinson\u2019s more inflammatory public comments after he won the primary and found that he still mostly held the Trump base together.<\/p>\n
But Harris\u2019s replacement of Biden at the top of the ticket made North Carolina more competitive, and moderate voters kept recoiling from Robinson. By the time CNN reached out to the campaign on Sept. 17 about the porn site account, many Republicans had already become resigned to the likelihood that Robinson would lose.<\/p>\n
As state party leaders braced for CNN\u2019s story to drop, however, a small handful of them initially held onto the hope that they could somehow control the damage.<\/p>\n
One top Republican election lawyer in the state, Phil Strach, had led the legal effort to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s name from the ballot a few weeks earlier, forcing counties to reprint their ballots just as they were preparing to send them out.<\/p>\n
It was worth a try to see if it could happen again, the Republicans said in conversations that day. But it required Robinson to voluntarily exit the race.<\/p>\n
Around the same time, Robinson released a video denying the latest allegations even before the details had published. He vowed to stay in the race.<\/p>\n
There was no controlling the damage, the Republicans concluded. And that ended the conversation.<\/p>\n
Gardner and LeVine reported from Washington.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
CHARLOTTE \u2014 North Carolina Republicans were in a panic last week as CNN prepared to drop a devastating story about their nominee for governor, Mark Robinson. Some sought help from the man who had supercharged Robinson\u2019s candidacy: Donald Trump. A member of Robinson\u2019s own team asked the Trump campaign for help persuading their boss to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10282,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}