Could Mark Robinson’s extremism hand North Carolina to Kamala Harris?

Republicans are in trouble in North Carolina, as recent polls show the party’s gubernatorial candidate, Mark Robinson, trailing his Democratic opponent. What’s more, Democrats consider Robinson’s run on the ballot could cause Donald Trump to lose the important thing swing state to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in November.

Robinson, North Carolina’s first black lieutenant governor, has generated headlines for inflammatory comments he has made about race, women and the LGBTQ community, amongst other issues. The gubernatorial candidate compared abortion to slavery, downplayed the problem of slavery itself and said:Some people need to be killed”during a church service in June.

Critics like Crew were particularly outraged by Robinson’s comments on race, even condemning the term “African-American” to describe his racial identity. Robinson also released “so-called” Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties as a time when “so much freedom was lost” and called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a “communist.” Ironically, when Trump endorsed Robinson for governor, he called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

IN announcement of Progress NC Action, King’s son, Martin Luther King III, slammed Robinson for “repeatedly” mocking his father.

“It’s not the petty insults that bother me. It’s his total rejection of the Civil Rights Movement that my father and so many others lived and died for,” King said. “As my father said, there is nothing more dangerous than honest ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

The crew also took part in a Progress NC ad flay Robinson expressed outrage at his online comments about women, including calling them “whores and heifers” and suggesting they “shouldn’t be leaders.”

Robinson has also made controversial statements about abortion, calling it murder and suggesting it needs to be a capital crime in North Carolina, where the medical procedure is legal for up to 12 weeks. Josh Stein has sharply criticized his Republican opponent for previously stating that the abortion issue is a result of girls not being “responsible enough to keep (their) skirts down.”

Robinson tried to soften the topic, releasing a campaign ad in August wherein he tearfully acknowledged that he and his wife, Yolanda Hill Robinson, had an abortion 30 years ago. He described it as a “very difficult decision” and said he supports North Carolina’s current law, which incorporates “common sense exceptions” for rape, incest and the lifetime of the mother.

Robinson’s extreme language appears to have cost him the election. According to the August vote by High Point University, Robinson is 14 points behind Josh Stein, the Democratic candidate for governor. Even more alarming for Republicans nationwide is the recent, nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved North Carolina went from “Republican-leaning” to “uncertain” within the presidential race between Trump and Harris.

Trump has won the state within the last two presidential elections; nonetheless, Harris and President Joe Biden nearly lost North Carolina 4 years ago by just 1.34 percentage points, reducing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 lack of 3.6%.

Democrats are hoping that Robinson’s extremism and declining popularity amongst North Carolina voters will help Harris secure the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House on November 5.

Payne argued that Republicans, who’ve to “put money, resources and energy” into defending their historic advantage in North Carolina, can have less money and resources in key states like Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

“It’s kind of Republican hubris and Republican rule that comes back home to support them,” Payne said.

He compared Robinson’s campaign for governor to that of Georgia’s 2022 Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who also made headlines for controversial statements that were seen as extreme even by Trump-era Republican Party standards.

“He pretends to be someone who cares about gun rights and religion, but in reality he doesn’t care about either of those things,” Bass said.

Bass believes Republicans put Robinson at the highest of the candidate list in an attempt to attract black voters with “Obama magic” without “understanding the intentions of black politics.”

While acknowledging there may be some distrust of presidency and frustration with each parties amongst black North Carolinians, Bass said, “Mark Robinson’s policies really don’t mesh with … the conservative black voter base that he claims to come from.”

Bass also criticized Republicans’ “political hypocrisy” for “attacking the first black woman to run for president” while concurrently running a black man like Robinson for governor as a Republican — something he said would fail to win over black voters.

There are still doubts that Harris will win the overall election in North Carolina against Trump, on condition that in that state, the Democratic candidate for governor and the Republican candidate for president have traditionally been split into two groups.

“Even Donald Trump has wavered in his support for Mark Robinson. Mark Robinson is really sticking with Donald Trump, not the other way around,” Bass noted.

Recalling Cheri Beasley’s tight race for the Senate in 2022, Bass said Democrats need to reexamine what went mistaken and concentrate on issues that matter to voters, equivalent to affordability, public education, police reform and the impact of natural disasters on the state.

Bass said he praised the Harris campaign for its recent rollout of an economic agenda, but he also wants Harris to more often address the problem of Israel’s war with Hamas within the Gaza Strip, which he called the “jackass in the room” on the Democratic National Convention.

He added: “It falls squarely on the shoulders of the party that has a lot of influence to allay some of the fears among its supporters so that everyone can persevere in this endeavour until November.”

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