LT. GOVERNOR MARK ROBINSON
OBSERVERS BRACE FOR
ROBINSON’S ANNOUNCING
RUN FOR GOVERNOR
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
There is now little doubt.
Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, after dropping numerous hints, is expected to formally announce his 2024 candidacy for governor of North Carolina during a rally on Saturday, April 22nd, at the Ace Speedway in Alamance County.
Why are political observers across the state and nation convinced that the black Republican conservative from Greensboro will kick off his campaign in two weeks?
For starters, two-term state Treasurer Dale Folwell, another Republican, announced his gubernatorial candidacy on March 25th. Folwell, a former state representative from Winston-Salem, says if elected, he would be about …”attacking problems, not people,” alluding to Robinson’s history of broadbrushing the LGBTQ community, Democrats, Jews and even other African-Americans.
One MSNBC columnist even recalls Robinson once asking, “Why would I want to be part of a ‘community’ that sucks from the putrid tit of the government and then complains about getting sour milk?”
With Folwell in the field a month earlier, and Democrat state Attorney General Josh Stein having announced his bid last January, Robinson has little choice but to throw his hat in the ring relatively sooner than later. Despite how popular he may be among the GOP grassroots, Christian right-wing and Trump supporters, Robinson will have to start raising money now for a successful two-prong campaign war chest.
The first prong will be to fund a primary battle against Folwell to secure the NC Republican Party’s gubernatorial nomination. The second prong would be a general election face-off against Stein (Democrat incumbent Gov. Roy Cooper cannot run for a third term).
Polls already show Robinson as an odds-on favorite to win the primary against Folwell, but no one has started formally campaigning yet.
One edge that Robinson does have over his GOP rival is that he is closely aligned with former Pres. Donald Trump, while Folwell is not. Despite Trump’s recent indictment by a New York grand jury, the latest polling shows his GOP popularity going up, which may help Robinson.
When asked about Trump’s North Carolina popularity, Folwell told WXII-12 TV recently, “I don't think I'm going to be the Donald Trump-endorsed candidate. But I'll also say this, I never asked Donald Trump to be my valentine.”
Remarks like that won’t help Folwell with Trump supporters against Robinson.
Folwell says he would welcome the opportunity to debate Robinson, primarily because he has much more legislative experience. “Nobody ever heard of him 1,000 days ago,” the state treasurer told WXII -12, “and people can choose and go to YouTube and figure out, you know, who he is and what he stands for.”
Indeed it was 2018 when a black unknown factory worker named Mark Robinson went before the Greensboro City Council to argue for protecting gun rights. Video of his fiery remarks went viral, and soon, Robinson found himself being recruited by North Carolina Republicans to run for lt. governor. After winning the GOP primary, Robinson shocked the political world by then winning the 2020 election, and the second highest office in the state.
His tenure in office has been controversial at best, as his past demeaning remarks about women, abortion, and progressive policies in general have made him a darling of the Christian right both statewide and nationally.
But political observers charge that Robinson tries to have it both ways.
For instance, after last week’s tragic gun massacre at a private school in Nashville, Tenn. where three adults and three nine-year old students were murdered, Robinson posted on his Facebook page, “…[O]ur hearts are breaking for the families, friends and loved ones who lost someone in yesterday’s tragedy,” later adding, “We serve the people, and the people are calling on us to act. We must come together to find a way forward that will not allow our schools to be penetrated by those who want to do our children harm...”
But it was Robinson’s fellow North Carolina Republicans in the state legislature who very recently did away with the longstanding pistol permit requirement that county sheriffs relied on to control who can own and carry a firearm in the state.
Whatever “we serve the people, and the people are calling on us to act…” meant, it was hard justifying that pledge while his Republican colleagues effectively allowed more guns on the streets of North Carolina unchecked in the tragedy’s aftermath.
“Your prayers are useless,” a derisive Facebook poster named “Joe Joe” responded to Robinson’s “…[O]ur hearts are breaking….” post.
“If you cannot offer concrete solutions, you need to go work at Wal-Mart. You might actually be qualified for that job. You are not nearly qualified to be a servant of the people in a democracy. You are a tyrant in the making.”
Other posters, however, gave Robinson their full-throated support.
The black Republican has been vocal, however, in criticizing African American leaders who have spoken out against what they believe to be racist policies made law by his white N.C. GOP legislative colleagues. Robinson is lauded for telling predominantly white, conservative Republican audiences that there is no racism committed against black people.
But political observers say “Check the record.”
“Recall, even though it’s painful, the Republican lawmakers’ work of the last dozen years,” wrote UNC-Chapel Hill law Professor Gene Nichol in a recent News and Observer op-ed. “They’ve given us, judges ruled, among the most expansive racial gerrymanders ever seen in America. They’ve used precision to deny Black voters access to the polls. They’ve discriminated against African Americans so severely it demolished foundational requirements of popular sovereignty.”
Prof. Nichols continued, “They enabled greater racial segregation in education; repealed the Racial Justice Act; made it harder to get police video footage released; sanctified Confederate monuments; raised criminal penalties in response to Black Lives Matter protests; and claimed a pervasive need to outlaw critical race theory without knowing what it is.”
Political observers say if Republican "Governor" Mark Robinson is elected in 2024 , and has a GOP majority NC General Assembly to partner with, there would be very little they could not do to continue to roll civil rights gains back.
The entire nation will be closely watching Mark Robinson's campaign as of April 22nd.
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NEW STUDY SAYS IF RACE
REMOVED FROM COLLEGE
ADMISSIONS, FEWER BLACKS
ATTEND
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
The conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court is soon expected to issue it’s decision in a case that challenges affirmative action admission policies at predominately white UNC-Chapel Hill and Harvard University.
The High Court is expected to rule that race-conscious college admissions are unconstitutional. According to the online publication Inside Higher Ed, the momentous decision is expected “to affect all of higher education.” Chief diversity officers across the nation are already preparing for a negative decision.
“About 60 percent of top U.S. colleges consider race a factor in admissions, according to 2015 estimates,” reports Reuters News Service.
But a new study titled, Race-conscious Affirmative Action: What’s Next, issued on March 28th by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce “…found that admissions practices that consider class - defined by family income and parental education and occupational prestige - but not race, would still leave selective colleges without the representation of Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and Pacific Islander students seen in U.S. high schools,” according to BET News.
If the conservative-majority court does throw out race as a significant factor in college admissions, hundreds of thousands of young people of color could lose their opportunity to rise above the poverty of their personal economic circumstance to achieve a good education at a quality school of higher learning.
If the study by Georgetown University is correct, the study maintains, the denial of such educational opportunities to Black and other students of color would automatically relegate them to a lower rung in educational and economic achievement, thus reinforcing their lower socio-economic station in life.
“Without race-conscious admissions, the role selective colleges play in creating equal opportunity in our society is likely to diminish,” says Zack Mabel, co-author of the Georgetown study. To achieve the same level of diversity in admissions now, especially among African-American students, schools like UNC - Chapel Hill would have to “fundamentally alter their admissions practices,” going beyond just socio-economic factors alone to admit students of color.
It was last fall when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments where a group called the Students for Fair Admission claimed that UNC at Chapel Hill discriminated against white and Asian-American applicants in favor of African-American and other applicants of color in college admissions. UNC- Chapel Hill, like other major predominately-white universities like Harvard, have been able to legally and successfully incorporate race as a factor in their admissions policies for several decades, thanks to previous federal court rulings that originally challenged the practice, but ultimately forced those schools to eliminate racial quotas and fine tune their practices.
Schools like UNC at Chapel Hill were able to show that making race a factor, instead of the factor in considering college applicants, helped to provide students of color the opportunity they deserved, and provided the diversity that society needed in college-trained potential leaders of tomorrow.
The plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admission, counter that all college admissions processes should be race-blind in order to ensure fairness for white and Asian-American applicants, and be class-based instead.
Interestingly though, the Georgetown study suggested eliminating the traditional affirmative action processes that have given whites a strong advantage for generations.
An alternative admissions process that includes socio-economic status would achieve a high level of racial and ethnic diversity if colleges eliminate preferences for legacy applicants, student athletes, those with ties to donors and other such factors that mostly benefit white, affluent applicants, the study found, BET News reported. The study also recommended predominately-white colleges and universities “…expand their recruitment of high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds for a class-based alternative to produce a similar outcome to race-conscious admissions….”
A ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to be issued this spring.
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