Fears Grow in North Carolina As Ultra-Extreme Republican Eyes Governor's Mansion

- The Guardian, May 5, 2023. - If Mark Robinson wins gubernatorial race in 2024 there would be no one to hold back a wave of rightwing bills in the state. 📝 Ed.

To Mark Robinson, gay and transgender people are “filth”, homosexuality is an abominable sin, and the transgender movement is “demonic” and “full of the spirit of the antichrist”. Muslim Americans, meanwhile, are invaders, and Robinson is not afraid to dabble in antisemitism: in his mind an international cabal of Jewish financiers make up a modern-day “four horsemen of the apocalypse”, who rule the banks in “every single country”. Lots of people have offensive & conspiracy-minded beliefs. But not all of them are running, as Robinson is, to be governor of North Carolina.

And to people who don’t share Robinson’s views, the problem is that it looks like he could win – furthering the Republican party’s years-long lunge to what was previously rightwing fringe politics.

“Mark Robinson would be the most extreme gubernatorial candidate but also governor that we’ve ever seen in our history,” said Anderson Clayton, the chair of the North Carolina Democratic party. The risk Robinson would pose if elected in Nov. 2024 – polling is scarce at this stage, but experts believe the race between Robinson & Josh Stein, his expected Democratic opponent, is a toss-up – is real. Republicans control both the state house & senate, and the GOP expanded its lead in last year’s elections. Roy Cooper, the Democratic governor whose tenure is forced term limits to come to an end in 2023, has vetoed 52 bills from becoming law in his 6 years in office, the Assembly reported, including laws that would have rolled back gun control & reduced abortion access.

With a Republican in the governor’s office – particularly a governor like Robinson – there would be no one to hold back a wave of rightwing bills. “We have bills right now going through our general assembly to ban gender affirming care for trans youth. We have a ban against trans athletes or young people competing in sports right now. We have a lot of discriminatory, just persecuting our own citizens-type of legislation happening in our state,” Clayton said. “And Mark Robinson is only going to be the person who’s going to make that worse.” There was a time, not that long ago, when North Carolina was seen as a future Democratic state. Barack Obama won there, narrowly, in 2008, & Democrats giddily held their national convention there in 2012, with the hope they could triumph in North Carolina for years to come.

It didn’t happen, & Republicans have won every presidential election since. Republicans have super-majorities in the state legislature, yet Chris Cooper, a professor of political science at Western Carolina univ., said elections for state positions like governor have tended to be close. “North Carolina has been right on the razor’s edge between Democrat & Republican. We were the bluest red state in the country in 2020 – of all states that Trump won, his margin was among the smallest in North Carolina,” he said. “I think it is the definition of a purple state in that it’s right in the middle. What it has not done at the presidential level is to swing – so it is a purple state but not a swing state.” Taken in isolation, Robinson’s back story is compelling. One of 10 children who grew up poor in Greensboro...

- More, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/05/mark-robinson-republican-north-carolina-governor-race