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Mark Robinson sent few emails as North Carolina Lt. Gov., records show

North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson arrives for a rally where he announced his candidacy for Governor at a rally outside Ace Speedway in Elon, N.C. Saturday, April 22, 2023. (Lynn Hey / For WUNC)
Lynn Hey
/
For WUNC
North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson arrives for a rally where he announced his candidacy for Governor at a rally outside Ace Speedway in Elon, N.C. Saturday, April 22, 2023.

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has sent only about 30 substantive emails in more than three years in office, newly released public records show.

The lieutenant governor’s office has released a public records file showing all the emails he sent from three accounts, two official and one personal Gmail account, since he took office in January 2021. The records show Robinson was an infrequent user of email, and most of the released emails are messages forwarded to staff with no text, or are calendar invites to meetings.

Only 31 emails include original text written by Robinson. His chief of staff and his campaign spokesman did not respond to an inquiry from WUNC about why he uses email so infrequently.

The email records come following news reports that he failed to respond to two concurrence requests from Gov. Roy Cooper’s office to sign off on state of emergency declarations for Helene. The concurrence votes simply required Council of State members to reply “yes” or “no” to Cooper’s emailed request to pass an emergency executive order. Robinson's spokesperson downplayed the missed concurrence votes, noting the declaration was passed anyway without his participation.

WUNC reported in September that Robinson has been routinely absent from some of the lieutenant governor’s primary job responsibilities, including presiding over sessions of the state Senate and serving on the State Board of Education and other boards.

Robinson’s 2023 calendar showed he had his “office time” on Mondays when he met with staff. Other common activities on his calendar included interviews with conservative media outlets like Newsmax and talk radio stations, tours of local businesses and manufacturing facilities, and speeches to business trade groups and other organizations. But at other times the calendar shows days-long stretches with no meetings or events listed.

He's presided over state Senate sessions just three times this year, and none were during the “short session” that ran from April through June. State Board of Education meeting minutes show he’s missed nearly half of the board’s sessions. And neither Robinson nor anyone from his office has ever attended the quarterly meetings of the Military Affairs Commission.

The WUNC Politics Podcast is a free-flowing discussion of what we're hearing in the back hallways of the General Assembly and on the campaign trail across North Carolina.

The lack of email correspondence from Robinson makes it difficult to tell what the Office of Lieutenant Governor has focused on during his tenure.

Three of the released emails are identical responses from Robinson to constituents concerned about insurance rate increases. The lieutenant governor explains in those emails that his office doesn’t get a say in a process overseen by the commissioner of insurance.

Many of the emails are brief responses to notices about upcoming meetings, such as the State Board of Education. The records show Robinson sent fewer than 10 emails directly to his staff over the course of more than three years.

In March, he replied to a Substack newsletter about misleading unemployment statistics, saying “This is FANTASTIC!!!! … Thanks for sharing!!!!” Another brief email from March forwards a complaint about a public school mistreating a disabled student, in which Robinson instructs a staffer to “take a look into this.”

Robinson isn’t the only North Carolina elected official with a history of infrequent email use. In 2016 as he was running for governor, WRAL reported on a public records release of Roy Cooper’s emails during his time as attorney general. It showed Cooper sent just two emails over an entire year, and his staff told the TV station he preferred phone calls and in-person communications instead of email.

Colin Campbell covers politics for WUNC as the station's capitol bureau chief.