A lot of people now know about Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina. Some national and international outsiders looking in were shocked at his Super Tuesday win. But I always thought the Donald Trump-endorsed Robinson was a shoo-in. That’s the red-versus-blue country we live in, when many times the “D” or “R” label means more than the person wearing it.
Yet, I find myself glancing side to side at my fellow North Carolinians, realizing that with Robinson’s win, they either don’t know much about the man other than his party affiliation, or they know him and approve of what he says and how he says it.
And as loud as he screams his repugnant views, there’s no excuse for anyone within state lines pretending he’s an unknown quantity. I swear you can hear him roar from the beach to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
His voters won’t be able to hide now, though, since national newspapers and cable networks are all doing their “Mark Robinson” stories in the same way gawkers slow down for a better look at a car crash on the side of the road.
So, what exactly has Robinson said to make national media finally notice? Take your pick, since the list of racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic comments and personal insults is long.
The civil rights movement that provided the path for Robinson, a Black man, to rise to his current post of lieutenant governor? He has said it was “crap,” called the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an “ersatz pastor” and a “communist,” and disavowed being any part of the African American community. “Why would I want to be part of a ‘community’ that sucks from the putrid tit of the government and then complains about getting sour milk?” he wrote, employing every offensive stereotype that would be right at home at a white supremacist get-together.
Women? Robinson’s message to a North Carolina church was that Christians were “called to be led by men,” that God sent Moses to lead the Israelites. “Not Momma Moses,” he said. “Daddy Moses.”
Robinson reserves especially toxic rhetoric for members of the LGBTQ community, unapologetically, and often in sermons. “There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth,” Robinson preached in one of them.
And though Robinson has tried to clean up his record with a trip to Israel, the Hitler-quoting candidate wrote in 2018 on Facebook: “This foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash.”
There is plenty more, but you get the idea.
