ELLERBE, N.C. – Addressing over 100 supporters outside an ice cream stand that's shaped like a giant strawberry, North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson battered his Democratic rival for governor and the media, and said he'd keep fighting as their race neared its conclusion.
“I’m on the battlefield for the people of this state,” he said in a stump speech this week.
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In what was once expected to be one of the fiercest down-ballot races of the year, a candidate who won the endorsement and effusive praise of former President Donald Trump continues to play defense as Election Day looms. He's been badly outspent by his Democratic opponent, state Attorney General Josh Stein, and he's still trying to blunt the impact of a CNN report on offensive comments he allegedly made on an online porn site years before he ran for public office.
Answering reporters' questions Wednesday outside The Berry Patch in Ellerbe, 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of Raleigh, Robinson said he still believes he'll win.
“People don’t care about salacious lies that supposedly happened 15 years ago. They don’t care about Facebook posts from 10 years ago," Robinson said. "What they care about is how they’re going to feed their families, how they’re going to keep their business open, how they’re going to get their child a great education.”
North Carolina was projected early on as the governor's race to watch this fall — a battleground state clash where statewide races are usually close and for a position Democrats have held for all but four years out of the past 32.
In the campaign's final days, advantages appeared to favor another Democrat to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
Stein had a lead over Robinson in several polls of North Carolina voters conducted since Labor Day. Campaign finance reports filed this week had Stein's campaign with a massive haul — $44.6 million collected during a 3 1/2-month period ending in mid-October and $59.3 million spent during the same period. Robinson's campaign committee, meanwhile, raised $4.1 million and spent almost $10 million. During the election cycle, Stein has outspent Robinson by a nearly 4-to-1 margin.
Stein's financial advantage and support from allies helped them persistently remind voters about blunt statements made by Robinson about abortion, women and LGBTQ+ people that they argue should disqualify him for the job, while also promoting the attorney general's accomplishments.
Robinson's support took its biggest hit when CNN reported in September that Robinson made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago. Robinson denied writing the messages, which The Associated Press did not independently confirm, and sued CNN for defamation in October.
The lawsuit is pending, but the report had immediate repercussions. Robinson’s top campaign staff quit. The Republican Governors Association pulled the plug on television advertising for Robinson. His campaign is no longer running commercials and is focusing on social media and events in small towns and rural areas, like Ellerbe, where GOP turnout is high.
Trump didn't revoke his endorsement of Robinson, a man he'd once described as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” but Robinson no longer appears at Trump rallies. Asked last week while visiting Hurricane Helene recovery efforts in western North Carolina whether he would urge voters to keep supporting Robinson, Trump replied: "I’m not familiar with the state of the race right now.”
Robinson said Wednesday he had spoken to Trump since the CNN report aired and “his message to me was to keep going, keep fighting and win this race.”
Stein, meanwhile, isn't assuming anything. He reminds supporters that he won reelection as attorney general in 2020 by less than 13,000 votes. He's encouraging get-out-the-vote efforts for him, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and down-ballot races, and has been backing up support for other Democrats with cash. Through mid-October, Stein's campaign had contributed $12 million directly to the state Democratic Party.
“We are working hard, our heads down. We’re running hard through the finish line,” Stein told reporters after meeting Democratic Party volunteers on Tuesday in Smithfield, 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Raleigh. “It’s about trying to talk to as many voters as we can about the clarity of the choice between our positive, hopeful, optimistic vision and (Robinson's) divisive, angry and hateful vision.”
Robinson told supporters that Stein has spent $50 million on ads simply to promote a “I don't like Mark Robinson” platform. Robinson has said if elected he would expand fiscal and education policies that fellow Republicans who control the General Assembly have passed. Stein's platform largely follows Cooper’s policy prescriptions for public schools and clean energy and against abortion restrictions and private-school voucher expansion.
Helene's catastrophic flooding affected the campaign. As attorney general, Stein spoke at news conferences on recovery and met with President Joe Biden when he visited. Robinson criticized Cooper for the state's initial response and worked with a sheriff to deliver relief supplies to the mountains.
Robinson, who would be the state's first Black governor, still has support among conservatives — many of whom appreciate his working-class story and emergence as a vocal gun-rights advocate before he became lieutenant governor. Stein would be the state's first Jewish governor.
Some top Republican officials, including House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger, haven’t publicly cut ties with Robinson. A few statewide GOP candidates still back him, too.
At The Berry Patch, retired school custodian Raymond Moore, 69, of Ellerbe, who has attended many Robinson events, called Robinson “a good man, a good solid man” and discounted the accusations. “Everybody has a past,” Moore said. ”I know what he is today.”
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Associated Press writer Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.