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This yard sign made me do a double-take Thursday morning on Providence Road in south Charlotte:
Robinson, of course, is Mark Robinson, the GOP candidate for governor.
Weatherman is Hal Weatherman, the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor.
The sign makes it appear as though they are running as a ticket, although they don’t have to. In North Carolina, the governor and lieutenant governor run independently, which is how we got a Cooper-Robinson “administration.”
(I haven’t seen any Stein-Hunt signs for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein and lieutenant governor candidate Rachel Hunt.)
The sign puzzled me, because Robinson is polling poorly and Weatherman wouldn’t seem to have a reason to tie them together.
And that was hours before the state began buzzing over an incoming CNN story that detailed how Robinson made numerous disturbing racist and sexual comments on an online pornographic forum in 2008 and 2012.
CNN alleged — with compelling evidence — that Robinson posted that he is a “black NAZI!”; that he enjoys pornography in which transgender women have sex with cis women (Robinson has frequently disparaged the LGBT community); and how he reminisced about peeping into women’s showers when he was a teenager.
Robinson denied making the posts. He also said he wasn’t dropping out, and didn’t before the Thursday deadline.
You can argue Weatherman shouldn't share billing with Robinson based on all the previous things Robinson has said, but let’s set aside for a moment.
From a purely political standpoint, it’s hard for the pairing to make sense. Why would Weatherman agree to share a sign with a candidate who is trailing Democrat Josh Stein by nearly 10 percentage points in an average of polls?
(The sign was paid for by the N.C. Republican Council of State Committee. It was authorized by the Weatherman and Robinson campaigns.)
And there’s more evidence of Weatherman hitching his wagon to Robinson. Here is a social media post from Aug. 7:
Drafting off Robinson would be a good strategy to win a GOP primary.
But in the general election, Weatherman will be identified as a Republican on the ballot. In North Carolina, that alone gives anyone close to a 50-50 chance (perhaps more) to win a statewide race.
A few more thoughts/questions:
Does Robinson hurt Donald Trump at the top of the ticket?
- National Democrats have long hoped Robinson would depress turnout for Trump, although the Trump brand may be strong enough to withstand any down-ballot follies.
The Trump campaign had already started distancing itself from Robinson (the last time they appeared on stage together, it was for less than a minute, Robinson didn’t speak, and Trump joked about his weight), but there’s still plenty for Democrats to work with. The former president endorsed him in the primary, and has called Robinson “MLK on steroids.”
But Trump has survived so many other scandals that Inside Politics is skeptical whether Robinson will do much to him.
- Will Democrats begin running any sort of coordinated campaign of their own? So far, each Council of State candidate has been running their own race. Will there be a significant effort (TV, not social media) to tie Republican candidates to Robinson?
After all, those Republican candidates (like Weatherman) aren’t well-known. They can be defined in a short amount of time.
- Democratic Labor Commissioner candidate Braxton Winston made an early attempt at this. He posted on social media Thursday that his opponent, Republican Luke Farley, had deleted old photographs of himself with Robinson. (The photos were before the March primary, when there was some political expediency to being close to Robinson.)
Democrat Jeff Jackson, who is running for N.C. attorney general, released a mash-up video on social media, mocking his Republican opponent, Dan Bishop, for endorsing Robinson.
The video shows Bishop saying things like “I want to be part of Mark Robinson’s new majority” immediately before a CNN reporter says how Robinson called himself a “black NAZI!”
The State Board of Elections said Thursday afternoon that Thursday midnight was the deadline by law for a candidate to drop out.
The state said the GOP would still be able to nominate a replacement candidate, although Robinson’s name would still be on the ballot.
However, it’s possible Robinson could still be pressured to drop out, and Republicans could go to court to force the state elections board to take his name off the ballot. That’s already happened once before, in the case of removing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from the presidential ballot.
Elections director Karen Brinson Bell told the Washington Post she would advise the elections board to contest that in court.
