It’s not surprising that MAGA politicians get by on scare tactics and little substance but I have to believe that will soon end and that North Carolina will help that along.

There’s a type of person who thrives off of angering people online. They are commonly referred to as a “troll,” someone who likes being provocative to get a rise out of netizens who come across the post.

Donald Trump proved in 2016 that being a troll can win you an election and is currently proving it can get you a second nomination. 

In North Carolina, my home state, there are two trolls on the ballot this year. Trump, who you’ve heard of, and another that hopes to one day be just as famous.

There has been a lot of recent coverage of North Carolina Republican Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson. Earlier this week, the Washington Post wrote about Robinson’s Facebook posts defending abusers like Harvey Weinstein.

“Harvey Weinstein and the rest of these high-profile Hollywood elites were merely sacrificial lambs,” Robinson said in a 2017 Facebook post, when dozens of women came forward to share their stories of Weinstein’s sexual abuse. “They have been slaughtered in order to smear the airwaves with talk of ‘sexual harassment’ and how pervasive the culture of ‘toxic masculinity’ is in America.”

I’ve been following Robinson’s rise for years. It isn’t the first time the gubernatorial candidate has made headlines for the outlandish things he says. It also doesn’t seem to be affecting his political career.

Mark Robinson’s greatest hits of offensive comments

In 2021, he caught statewide attention for referring to gay and transgender people as “filth.” A year later, he faced scrutiny for a 2012 Facebook comment where he admitted to paying for an abortion in 1989, despite being staunchly pro-life as a politician. There was a period where his Facebook posts could have constituted a column a week, with how controversial they are.

Despite the negative press attention, Robinson has a fighting chance of becoming North Carolina governor in November. Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, says the odds are almost 50/50.

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“He is good at getting his name out there, and he was able to win the primary, and that in North Carolina gives you about a coin toss chance to win the general,” Cooper told me.

With Robinson, North Carolina has created another MAGA politician whose words never seem to hurt their chances of winning an election.

A quick ascent to political celebrity

In 2018, Robinson was just a regular guy when a video of him speaking at a Greensboro city council meeting was shared by Mark Walker, the district’s U.S. Representative at the time.

It gained millions of views on Facebook and landed Robinson on “Fox & Friends.” In 2020, he ran for lieutenant governor of North Carolina, a position with name recognition yet very little power. Despite never holding public office, he beat Democratic candidate Yvonne Lewis Holley and took office in 2021.

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Since then, Robinson has become something of a right-wing celebrity. He’s spoken at the National Rifle Association’s convention and the Conservative Political Action Conference. He’s been on Fox News repeatedly. He has more than 175,000 followers on Facebook and 114,500 on X, formerly Twitter. Recently, New York magazine went so far as to refer to him in a headline as “MAGA’s Great Black Hope.”

Robinson is made in Trump’s MAGA image – including scare tactics

In a way, Robinson’s rise to power mirrors Trump’s. Like Trump and other MAGA Republicans, Robinson thrives in the culture war. It extends past his online persona despite what little power he has as lieutenant governor. In 2021, he began a task force to out teachers “indoctrinating” students. It was at the height of school board debates on “critical race theory.”

Despite the promise of proof and 506 submissions to the task force in the first six weeks, there was little evidence that teachers were actually corrupting the state’s youth. For a MAGA politician, the end result is never the point. The objective is to make as much noise about a social issue as possible, rile up the base and create a fake crusade against anything deemed “woke.” When the proof isn’t there, there is never an admittance of wrongs. They just move on to the next boogeyman.

Despite the scare tactics, it’s clear that Robinson reflects some of the state’s politics. In the last year alone, the state rolled back abortion access by instituting a 12-week ban and has villainized trans people through a series of anti-LGBTQ bills.

On the other hand, he has said things that even give Republicans pause. While acting as governor in October 2023, he declared the state’s support of Israel in the war with Hamas. It resulted in people calling him out for past anti-Semitic remarks he’d made, including a Facebook post that outright denied the Holocaust happened.

The right does not seem to care about the horrible things Robinson has said – if they do, they aren’t being vocal enough about it.

“Would he be better off if he wasn’t so outlandish?” Cooper asks. “Probably, probably at the margins. But no rhetoric is going to tank a Republican or a Democratic candidate for a statewide office in North Carolina. It’s just too close, and crossover voting is too rare.”

It’s frustrating that nothing seems capable of sinking Robinson’s gubernatorial odds, despite the horrible things he has said over the years.

It also isn’t surprising. MAGA Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, and Trump himself have been able to soar past their conspiracy theories and social media posts to become legitimate threats to democracy, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves that there’s no way they can win. That’s exactly how people treated Trump in 2016, and we saw what happened there. North Carolina is on the verge of finding out after November.

Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter, @sara__pequeno and Facebook facebook.com/PequenoWrites

NEW BERN, N.C. (WITN) – The highly contested November elections are just under five months away, and North Carolina is a battleground state.

Common Cause, A nonpartisan government watchdog organization has been watching the election process across the country including North Carolina, and has some concerns for voters coming this November.

Bob Phillips, Executive Director of North Carolina’s Common Cause, has expressed concerns about misinformation, election sabotage, and the removal of the three-day grace period deadline for mail-in ballots in North Carolina.

This deadline had been established by a law in 2009 but was repealed in 2023. Phillips is worried that this change could disenfranchise voters this year. Additionally, he has voiced concerns about gerrymandering.

“This election will be held with new legislative and congressional maps. We’re number one in gerrymandering, and we have new maps that were crafted in 2022 by the legislature. These will be new legislative and congressional maps across the state, and that can sometimes mean a change in early voting sites” says North Carolina Common Cause executive director Bob Phillips.

A member of Craven County’s Board of Election says she believes that there will be a huge turnout like in 2020 and doesn’t believe that the new voter ID requirements will persuade voters from coming out.

For more information on requirements for the upcoming election in Craven County click here

Copyright 2024 WITN. All rights reserved.

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University elected a new chancellor on Friday.

James Martin II, the newly elected chancellor, is an accomplished civil engineer who has led engineering and STEM initiatives at three large public research universities.

Martin’s appointment at North Carolina A&T will begin on Aug. 15. He succeeds Harold Martin Sr., who will retire after 15 years as chancellor.

Martin served four years as the U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering in Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering. He has decades of experience as an engineering professor, institute director, dean and leader of science initiatives at major public universities, including Clemson University and Virginia Tech.

“During his career, he has promoted academic innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration and improved organizational culture. He will now lead the nation’s largest historically Black university on a trajectory to become a top-tier research institution,” said an announcement of his election.

“James Martin is the right leader to engineer North Carolina A&T’s continuing rise,” said UNC System President Peter Hans. “He believes in what he calls ‘impatient optimism,’ a productive sense of possibility in what can be achieved when people think across disciplines, feel a sense of shared purpose, and commit to an ambitious vision. It’s exactly the kind of mindset that will help affirm the university’s status as one of the nation’s best research institutions and engines of social mobility.”

As dean at Pittsburgh, he oversaw an engineering program with 2,900 undergraduates, 850 graduate students and 200 faculty. There he raised research dollars by 50 percent, built strategic partnerships with industry and government, and increased diversity, enrollment and graduation rates. Previously, he chaired the civil engineering department at Clemson University and was the founding executive director of Clemson’s Risk Engineering and Systems Analytics Institute (RESA).

“North Carolina A&T is a recognized national leader in harnessing technology and access to learning to unlock human potential,” Martin said. “That’s one of many reasons why it’s so exciting to have been chosen to lead the university at a moment when America is in particular need of the very things that North Carolina A&T does best. Our students, faculty, staff and alumni are on an incredible ascent, having accomplished so much in recent years. I look forward to joining them on that journey and ensuring that we continue to build on A&T’s exceptional momentum as we set ambitious new sights for the months and years ahead.”

His numerous national, state and university awards for research, teaching, scholarship and service include the American Society of Civil Engineer’s Norman Medal, the highest honor for published work in his field. He was also inducted into the Virginia Tech Department of Civil Engineering’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni in 2015.

“Dr. Martin is an exceptional leader with a strong vision for where we can take our university in the coming years,” said A&T Board of Trustees Chair Kimberly Bullock Gatling. “North Carolina A&T has enjoyed enormous success in recent years, and I have no doubt that Dr. Martin will continue the university’s strong ascent and increase our national presence as a doctoral, research land-grant HBCU.”

“We were fortunate in this national search to draw a very competitive field of applicants and nominees from across the country. It was gratifying to see a certain standard of quality in leadership throughout the field,” said Search Advisory Committee Chair Hilda Pinnix-Ragland, former chair of the A&T Board of Trustees.

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