Politics

Mark Robinson’s candidacy has gone from bad to worse — and it could hurt Trump

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

Mark Robinson’s candidacy has gone from bad to worse — and it could hurt Trump

It’s possible nobody cares whether or not Mark Robinson, the MAGA Republican running for North Carolina governor, used to hang out at adult video storesas one explosive investigative piece in that state reported last week.

It’s possible, but unlikely.

Robinson’s star has been rising since a gun rights rant made him a right-wing star in 2018. Now, he’s North Carolina’s lieutenant governor and, with former President Donald Trump’s blessing, he’s trying to be the first Black governor in the state’s history.

The problem with judging so loudly and so often is you invite the same for yourself.

But Robinson has built his brand on judging, more than any politician I’ve seen in my two decades covering politics in North Carolina. Women, liberals, public school teachers, atheists, LGBTQ+ people, Jewish people, poor people — few have been spared Robinson’s righteous wrath. God calls men, not womento lead, he says. LGBTQ+ people are “demonic.” They’re “filth,” they’re “maggots.” Women get abortions because they couldn’t keep their “skirt down.” Some folks out there “need killing.”

The problem with judging so loudly and so often is you invite the same for yourself. A man who gives no grace to others can’t expect it for himself.

The Assembly, an online news site in North Carolina, reported last week that in the 1990s and early 2000s, before Robinson was running for any offices, he would visit adult video stores in his hometown as often as five times a week.

According to the report — which Robinson’s campaign denied, calling the reporters “degenerates” — he would bring in pizza from the Papa John’s restaurant he worked at and “preview” pornography in a booth inside the store. Multiple employees said he was a memorable customer. He was gregarious and funny, they said, albeit homophobic, occasionally cracking jokes at the expense of the store’s gay clientele.

“I know he might have problems with gay people, but I don’t think he has problems with lesbians,” one employee said of Robinson’s taste in pornography, according to the Assembly.

People will say this isn’t news. Many Americans, especially menhave watched or regularly watch pornography. But porn’s ubiquitousness has nothing to do with why this story matters.

Voters will forgive bad policies, dumb statements, even crimes, but they rarely forgive humiliation. They won’t see the big, strong MAGA superhero Robinson says he is. They’ll see a gay-hating man taking a pizza into a private booth in a windowless adult video store to watch lesbian porn.

In politics, there’s the person politicians say they are, the person people perceive them to be, and the person they really are. You hope there’s not much of a gap between them, but with Robinson — this “born again” Christian who, according to his memoirfound religion in the 1980s — it’s a Grand Canyon-sized chasm.

This adult video store story is just the latest trouble for Robinson’s struggling campaign.

Not everyone in Robinson’s base — rural, mostly white Christians — will believe this story. But some will and, for better or for worse, people don’t like to talk about sex or pornography in these communities. It’s not “table-talk.” The Assembly’s story documented how people of faith picketed the Greensboro, North Carolina, adult video stores that Robinson is accused of going to. Those people are the people who are supposed to be excited to vote for Robinson.

This adult video store story is just the latest trouble for Robinson’s struggling campaign. The governor’s race should be nail-bitingly close but, according to some pollsRobinson trails his Democratic opponent, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, by double digits. Some Republicans are even concerned that Robinson might damage former President Donald Trump’s hopes of carrying North Carolina, an all-important battleground state in the presidential election.

If that’s the case, Republicans have no one but themselves to blame. Robinson’s drawbacks as a candidate were obvious. In 2022, after years of anti-abortion statements from Robinson, we learned that he paid for his wife’s abortion in 1989, before they were married. That’s hard to stomach from a man who’s supported a complete abortion bancalled abortion doctors “butchers of humanity,” and shamed women who need reproductive health care.

Robinson also has touted himself as a small-business owner who believes in personal responsibility while slamming people who take government “charity.” But his background includes multiple bankruptciesfive years of unfiled federal taxes and a day care business that, according to state recordswas cited numerous times for violations of state standards that are meant to keep children safe. Another report found that state inspectors cited the day carewhich Robinson and his wife co-owned, for falsifying certification documents so it could stay open.

Then there’s last month’s report in the Atlantic that Robinson, a U.S. Army veteran who promised to lead on veterans’ issues, hasn’t attended a single meeting of North Carolina’s Military Affairs Commission in the four years he’s been lieutenant governor — even though the commission is one of the few statutory duties of his office.

Either the state Republican Party performed no background research on its candidate for governor or, more likely, it knew and didn’t care. It believed that, after Trump’s myriad controversies didn’t sink him, that there is no floor, no accountability anymore for a MAGA candidate. But Robinson isn’t Trump. He isn’t being forgiven like Trump’s forgiven. The polls make that clear.

Republicans assumed the worst of their own base, of people of faith, of North Carolinians.

Like Trump, Robinson is light on policy, large on spit and venom. From his speeches, you’d think North Carolina is a blood-soaked, charnel wasteland, not one of the fastest-growing states in the nation — a pretty place with mountains, beaches, bootleggers, the best historically Black colleges in the nation, a massive veterans’ community, race car drivers, Dreamers, poets, musicians and Pride marches. It’s a complicated place, the kind of complicated that politicians like Robinson are afraid of.

Republicans assumed the worst of their own base, of people of faith, of North Carolinians — that they are cruel and stupid people who will reward the same in their political candidates. It’s an offensive miscalculation.

Now, the only question is whether North Carolina voters will make Trump and other Republicans on the ballot with Robinson pay for it too.

Billy Ball

Billy Ball is an award-winning journalist from North Carolina and a senior editor at Cardinal & Pinean online news site that covers North Carolina politics. His work has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and others.

Politics

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

Published

21 hours ago

September 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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Politics

Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.

Published

3 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.

In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.

Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.

Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.

“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.

Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.

“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.

He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.

“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”

The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.

In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.

He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.

“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.

Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.

“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.

He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”

While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.

“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.

Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.

“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.

He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”

Politics

Missouri Supreme Court pauses GOP gerrymander, likely netting Democrats 1 House seat

Published

3 days ago

September 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.

The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.

Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.