In Our Own Backyard: Mark Robinson Makes a Bid for North Carolina Governor

NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, Credit Wikimedia Commons

by Melisaundra Welles

Fifty-five-year-old Mark Keith Robinson (currently the 35th Lt. Gov. of North Carolina) is a problem. Now the GOP nominee seeking the state’s gubernatorial spot in 2024, Robinson uses malicious rhetoric in the hope of scoring a victory in the election this November.  Robinson is especially venomous to the women of North Carolina, plainly informing them that they should know their place. He’s told them to their faces that he would like America to go back to the time when women couldn’t vote[i]  and that “Feminism was planted in the ‘Garden,’ watered by the devil, and is harvested and sold by his minions.”[ii]

If those gems of wisdom aren’t priceless enough, Robinson has plenty more.  In an ad sponsored by Josh Stein, North Carolina’s 2024  Democratic nominee for governor, Robinson says, “Abortion in this country is not about protecting the lives of mothers. It is about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”[iii]   He doubled down on the sentiment before church attendees in July 2021 when he told them, “. . . I don’t care if you’re 24 hours pregnant.  I don’t care if you’re 24 weeks pregnant. . . .If you kill that young’un[,] it is murder.  You got blood on your hands.”[iv]

Robinson is also convinced that Margaret Sanger, the founder of America’s birth control movement, was a “witch”. The ideas of birth control and abortions, he concluded, was “straight from the devil.”[v]

That’s rich coming from someone who admits that he and his girlfriend (now wife) elected to have an abortion in the 1980s. Recently, however, Robinson claims he regrets that decision and that his and his wife’s experience and spiritual journey have made them “adamantly pro-life.”[vi]

Regardless of how he attempts to reconcile it, the fact remains that the Robinsons, in the 1980s, had an option to choose abortion—and they chose it. I don’t care that they chose it.  It’s their business.  But I do care that Robinson aims to strip that same right from the people of North Carolina, if he is elected governor in 2024. That’s a claim he’s made with his full chest: “I want North Carolina to be the most pro-life state in the nation. Hands down. Abortion is murder. It’s a scourge on this nation.  It needs to go.”[vii]

Women not knowing their place (and being loose, witches and murderers) aren’t the only things on Robinson’s mind.  He has plans for North Carolina’s education systems, too, which  are  suspiciously akin to  Project  2025. Just  as that plan proposes to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, Robinson wants to dismantle North Carolina’s State Board of Education and expand vouchers for private schools.  

Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s current governor, is concerned that more and more taxpayer money already is being used to fund private school vouchers. He estimates that within the first year of further voucher expansion, North Carolina public schools could face a $200 million loss in state funding. Public education advocates also are concerned with Robinson’s vision, which includes removing history and science from the first through fifth grade curricula.[viii]               ◘ 

Endnotes

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[i] The Real Mark Robinson in His Own Words, https://www.realmarkrobinson.com/.  Retrieved July 26, 2024.  See also, “Surprise: Mark Robinson, Trump’s Pick for North Carolina Governor, Wants to 'Go Back to the America Where Women Couldn’t Vote.'” Vanity Fair, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/mark-robinson-north-carolina-women-voting. Retrieved July 30, 2024.

[ii] Id.

[iii] “New ad hits North Carolina Republican Mark Robinson for anti-abortion comments that women didn’t keep their ‘skirt down.’” NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/north-carolina-republican-mark-robinson-abortion-ad-rcna155250.  Retrieved July 30, 2024.

[iv]  “Mark Robinson: GOP front-runner for North Governor supported banning abortions without exceptions. Now he avoids using the a-word.” CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/17/politics/kfile-mark-robinson-abortion-ban-no-exceptions/index.html.  Retrieved July 8, 2024.

[v] Id.

[vi] Id.

[vii] Id.

[viii] “Public education advocates decry Lt. Governor Robinson’s stances, rhetoric.”  NC Newsline, https://ncnewsline.com/2024/03/07/public-education-advocates-decry-lt-governor-robinsons-stances-rhetoric/.  Retrieved July 31, 2024.