Mark Robinson, the GOP candidate for North Carolina governor, found himself last week in a deep and disturbing scandal. WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his "On My Mind" commentary, says it was driven by Robinson’s desire … to be noticed.
Mark Robinson is not going to be governor of North Carolina.
He was already trailing Josh Stein by double digits in the polls. And Thursday’s CNN story, detailing the vile things he wrote for years on a porn site’s message board, snuffed out whatever small chance he had.
For the record, Robinson is not dropping out of the race, and he denies having made the comments. But I’m not sure how you can come away from that CNN piece and not think it was him. And part of the reason for that is all the other inflammatory things he’s said, in public and on video, about women and gay people and transgender people and Jewish people, not to mention specific people from former President Obama to Ellen DeGeneres.
Robinson is done. And I’m not going to lie — it would be easy, and fun, to stomp on the ashes of his campaign.
But I want to do something a little different this morning. I want to try to make sense of a man who has said and done so many senseless things.
Robinson clearly models himself after Donald Trump — in fact, he’d never have won public office if not for the secular religion Trump built on anger and outrage.
But I think there’s a difference. Trump, ultimately, craves power. He wants to be a strongman like his dictator pals.
Mark Robinson, I think, only craved attention.
He says and does all these outrageous things in the desperate hope that somebody will notice him.
How lonely and detached from society do you have to be to be a regular commenter on a porn site message board?
How much do you need to be seen to call yourself a “black NAZI” or comment that you wish slavery would come back?
Robinson doesn’t have a following like Trump does. All he has is a grip on Trump’s shirttail. And I suspect even Trump’s people are in the process of cutting him loose.
From what Robinson has said and written, he had a rough childhood, including time in foster care. I don’t know if that’s what left him with such a deep desire for attention. To voters, it probably doesn’t matter.
But I do wonder what he thinks now about the day that changed his life.
Back in 2018, as a private citizen, he gave a fiery pro-gun speech at a meeting of the Greensboro City Council. That speech went viral, and he got invited to so many speaking gigs that he quit his job. Just two years later, he was elected as lieutenant governor. Suddenly, everyone was paying attention to Mark Robinson.
And now, one election cycle later, his private life has been exposed, his reputation is in ruins, and his political career is more than likely over.
Sometimes the worst day of your life is the day you get what you want.
Tommy Tomlinson’s On My Mind column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section below. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org.
