January 27, 2023/Media

ICYMI: Editorial Warns Of Potential Economic Damage, Wreckage To State Standing With Robinson’s Candidacy

North Carolina knows the impact of a governor who puts culture wars ahead of the livelihood of the state all too well. Yesterday, a New York Times editorial highlighted the catastrophic damage Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson would cause if promoted to the Governor’s office, writing that he would halt job creation across the state “by repelling the sorts of companies and educated young workers attracted to it during the six years that Gov. Roy Cooper.” 

His time as Lieutenant Governor “mingles cruelty and snark,” as he’s used his bully pulpit to refer to “homosexuality as ‘filth’ and to the transgender rights movement as ‘demonic.’” As a strategist noted, North Carolinians don’t want “somebody prosecuting the culture wars when there’s a hurricane.” 

New York Times: Anti-Gay? Anti-Science? Antisemitic? Run for Governor of North Carolina! 

  • His election would almost certainly retard the state’s economic dynamism by repelling the sorts of companies and educated young workers attracted to it during the six years that Gov. Roy Cooper, a moderate Democrat who cannot run for another term, has been in office.

 

  • Robinson’s religion is indeed the whipping, slashing kind. It mingles cruelty and snark. When Paul Pelosi was assaulted in his home by a hammer-wielding intruder, Robinson didn’t offer prayers for his recovery. He expressed doubt that Pelosi was an innocent victim — and mocked him.

 

  • He has referred to homosexuality as “filth” and to the transgender rights movement as “demonic.” He’s preoccupied with the devil, whose hand he saw in the movie “Black Panther,” which was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist,” he railed in a Facebook post that could have used some copy-editing.

 

  • But Mac McCorkle, a longtime Democratic strategist who is now a professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy (where I also teach), said that while North Carolinians have elected their share of firebrands like Robinson to Congress, they have made different choices for the very different job of governor, who guides the day-to-day functioning of the state.

 

  • “Do people want somebody prosecuting the culture wars when there’s a hurricane?” McCorkle asked. He’s inclined to think not. “We haven’t had a shouter as governor, well, ever.”

 

  • But then we hadn’t had a spectacle like the far-right rebellion against the ascent of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in at least a century and a half. We hadn’t had a House speaker coddle the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene until Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Republican Party has gone off the rails but keeps hurtling forward, damage be damned. We’d be foolish in North Carolina to trust that we won’t be part of the wreckage.