Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Former President Donald Trump paved the way for Mark Robinson.<\/p>\n
Robinson, a candidate in North Carolina\u2019s GOP primary for governor Tuesday, has done all the things that would normally make someone a toxic general election candidate: He’s called homosexuality<\/a> “filth,\u201d made antisemitic remarks about Hollywood<\/a> controlling Black people and expressed retrograde views about women<\/a>.<\/p>\n And he\u2019s set to glide to the Republican nomination \u2014 and potentially lock Democrats out of state government in one of the country\u2019s biggest swing states.<\/p>\n Robinson’s likely victory on Tuesday is the latest in his nearly unarrested political rise \u2014 from a furniture manufacturer who gave a viral speech in defense of gun rights<\/a> at a city council meeting in 2018, to being elected lieutenant governor just over two years later.<\/p>\n Securing the nomination will set him on a collision course with state Attorney General Josh Stein, the likely Democratic nominee, for the most important \u2014 and almost assuredly most expensive \u2014 governor’s race of the year. Recent polling has Robinson and Stein effectively tied in a hypothetical general election match-up. Should Robinson win in November, it would bring all three branches of North Carolina\u2019s government under control of Republicans in a state that was once seen as Democrats\u2019 future foothold<\/a> in the South.<\/p>\n And it comes as both President Joe Biden and Trump signal they\u2019ll heavily target the state, which had the closest margin for any state Trump won in 2020.<\/p>\n Robinson is a bombastic and engaging orator who has often drawn comparisons to Trump \u2014 for their rapid rises in politics, the devotion they command from the GOP base and the laundry lists of scandals that have trailed both men. Robinson\u2019s public controversies range from agreeing with antisemitic remarks<\/a> about the global economy to comparing women who get abortions to murderers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Democrats are practically begging for the chance to raise that history during the general election, hoping it will sink Robinson. But Republican primary voters appear entirely uninterested in litigating it.<\/p>\n Robinson has faced a handful of prominent opponents for the GOP nod. State Treasurer Dale Folwell entered the race first, but has been unable to muster the resources to be competitive. Former Rep. Mark Walker was in the race for a bit before dropping out to try to win back a spot in Congress. But the most notable candidate is Bill Graham, a self-funding attorney who has poured millions into his campaign and has the backing of the state\u2019s senior senator, Thom Tillis<\/a>.<\/p>\n All three raised the same basic argument against Robinson: electability. Robinson\u2019s controversies, they said, would serve as a weight in November and squander the party\u2019s shot at complete control.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s going to have a lot of trouble,\u201d Tillis said in a brief interview with POLITICO. He said his criticism wasn\u2019t personal, but \u201cyou can assume that the Democratic Governors Association is going to use every page of whatever opposition research they\u2019ll have against the lieutenant governor.\u201d<\/p>\n Graham’s campaign poured nearly $5.5 million into advertising \u2014 the only significant advertising in the race from either party so far \u2014 with nearly $1.2 million of that spent on negative ads wailing on Robinson, according to tracking from AdImpact.<\/p>\n \u201cMark Robinson? He suggested the Holocaust wasn\u2019t real. Downplayed the Nazis. Promoted Hitler propaganda,\u201d Graham says in one of his ads<\/a>, referencing a report from Jewish Insider<\/a> last year unearthing old social media posts. Another ad highlights comments<\/a> Robinson made at a church that Christians are<\/a> \u201ccalled to be led by men,\u201d not women.<\/p>\n Robinson has called his social media posts \u201cpoorly worded\u201d but said that there \u201cis no antisemitism standing<\/a> here\u201d and that he believes women can be leaders. He and his allies have dismissed the electability argument, saying his critics just don\u2019t understand the modern GOP.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you were crafting a script and trying to design a character that would be the perfect character for the moment where politics are in 2024, you\u2019d be hard pressed to find much different than what you have with Mark Robinson,\u201d said Jonathan Felts, a longtime GOP operative who is helping lead a pro-Robinson super PAC.<\/p>\n Robinson\u2019s intraparty critics, he said, \u201care the people who are passionately longing for the good old days when the Republican Party was the Chamber of Commerce party.\u201d<\/p>\n The majority of Republican voters appear to side with Robinson. A poll from East Carolina University<\/a> from the middle of February found Robinson at 53 percent in the primary, compared to 13 percent for Graham and 7 percent for Falwell.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of these ads that attack Mark look very similar and are very similar to what the Democrats are going to run on,\u201d said Dallas Woodhouse, the former executive director of the state GOP. \u201cThat might just not work very well in a Republican primary.\u201d<\/p>\n The state\u2019s GOP political elite, with the exception of Tillis, also haven\u2019t gotten in Robinson\u2019s way. Some prominent Republicans \u2014 including Sen. Ted Budd<\/a> and state Senate Republican leader Phil Berger \u2014 endorsed his campaign, and most others sat on the sidelines.<\/p>\n