Trump reshaped the North Carolina Republican Party in his image. It could cost him the state

The North Carolina political world — and American politics — received a bombshell on Thursday when CNN reported that Mark Robinson, the state’s Republican lieutenant governor, had frequently commented on a porn site about the fact he enjoyed watching pornography featuring transgender women and said, “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too.”

Robinson’s porn preferences would not be an issue except that he has said that people “who support this mass delusion called transgenderism” want “to turn God’s creation backwards, and make it into a sickening image of rebellion to glorify Satan.” He also said: “Dear Transgender crowd, You CANNOT tran-sin GOD’S creation. Sincerely, A Bible Thumper.”

On top of that, Robinson reportedly called himself “a black NAZI” and extolled the virtues of slave ownership on the same site, saying: “I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few.”

Robinson has vehemently denied making any such comments and told CNN that the account wasn’t his.

The fallout from KFile’s reporting has been swift, however. So far, Robinson has shown no willingness to drop out of the race, despite the fact that polling had shown he was already trailing Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee for governor. It’s an ironic turn of events that Robinson, who previously quoted Hitler, will now likely lose, making Stein the Old North State’s first Jewish governor.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris’s campaign smells blood in the water. On Friday, the campaign released an ad tying Trump and Robinson, including Trump saying “I think you’re better than Martin Luther King,” while also showing Robinson saying abortion is “about killing a child because you aren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.” The ad says Trump and Robinson are “both wrong for North Carolina.”

In Donald Trump’s Republican Party, apologizing is a sign of weakness and “not backing down” is a sign that someone knows how to “fight.” Thom Tillis, the state’s senior senator who has become a consummate dealmaker in Washington, responded to the story bluntly on Twitter/X: “It was a tough day, but we must stay focused on the races we can win. We have to make sure President Trump wins NC and support the outstanding GOP candidates running for key NCGA and judicial races. If Harris takes NC, she takes the White House. We can’t let that happen.”

In other words, the North Carolina Republican Party — long seen as one of the most competent state parties — chose to stick by Robinson. It was a sign of just how much state parties as a whole have learned from Donald Trump and tried to imitate him. But in doing so, they forgot one key aspect: Not every candidate can do what Trump does. And now, that fact risks costing him the state.

The North Carolina GOP first took dominance after Barack Obama won the state in 2008. In 2010, Republicans took back both houses of the legislature and in 2012, took control of the governorship. They passed a voter ID bill, passing sweeping tax cuts and a bill that would ban transgender people from using public restrooms that correspondent to the gender with which they identify.

That last one showed Republicans overplayed their hand and Roy Cooper, a Democrat, beat the incumbent Republican governor despite Trump winning the state in 2016 and again in 2020.

Trump took a liking to North Carolinians, however. He made Mark Meadows his final chief of staff and he made Michael Whatley, the former North Carolina GOP chairman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee earlier this year. When it came time to replace Richard Burr, the senator who voted to convict Trump for his actions on January 6, Trump anointed Ted Budd, who won two years ago.

Like Trump, Robinson burst onto the scene without any prior political experience in 2018 after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, when he denounced Greensboro’s attempts to cancel a gun show. The video of him doing so immediately went viral. In 2020, he ran for lieutenant governor and won.

“The lieutenant governor’s race historically just gets very little attention,” John Hood, the president of the conservative John William Pope Foundation, told The Independent. “There wasn’t a lot of money spent in that race.”

Indeed, in 2020, the big focus was on the governor’s race and the Senate race. The lieutenant governor’s office immediately gave Robinson a national presence and a glidepath to the Republican nomination for governor.

“If you had a candidate [in the past] with this much baggage that had all these [problems] on a background check, you didn't run them for office, you didn't prop them up, no matter how good of a speaker they were,” Jonathan Bridges, a Republican strategist, told The Independent. “We saw that Donald Trump — a candidate that wasn't perfect, that did have baggage — was able to go in and become president.” So things changed.

Bridges said that Trump’s success made Republicans think they didn’t need someone with a sterling record. But they may have taken that to heart a little too much.

Now, not only is Robinson trailing Stein, but a poll from the station WRAL shows that in the attorney general race, Jeff Jackson, an inoffensive backbencher congressman, is beating Dan Bishop, who as a state legislator authored the bathroom ban and as a congressman voted to overturn the election results.

This isn’t just a North Carolina problem, either. In Arizona, Kari Lake trails significantly behind Ruben Gallego in the race for Senate after Lake, like Trump, refused to concede when she lost her race for governor in 2022. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has turned off nearly every group of voters except the MAGA faithful.

Not all these cases are guaranteed to lead to electoral disaster. But in North Carolina, Robinson’s troubles might be a fatal blow. Trump narrowly won the state in 2016 against Hillary Clinton and he lost it by a smaller margin to Joe Biden. The party has since modeled its behavior after Trump in a crucial swing state. And Trump might pay the price of teaching them his best moves.