ROBINSON SUES CNN
FOR DEFAMATION
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
With three weeks to go before the Nov. 5th general election, NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the embattled Republican gubernatorial nominee, has kept his promise, and filed a $50 million lawsuit against the Cable News Network (CNN) for defamation.
The suit, filed in Wake Superior Court this week, cites CNN’s Sept. 19th “K-files” report that alleged Robinson, many years before he was elected to public office, using an alias, frequented a pornographic website called “Nude Africa,” calling himself “Black Nazi,” making racially charged statements about bringing black slavery back, and expressing sexually explicit remarks that even involved a family member.
Robinson has vehemently denied CNN’s reporting, calling it “a high-tech lynching.”
“This is a high-tech lynching on a candidate who has been targeted from day one by folks who disagree with me politically and want to see me destroyed,” Robinson defiantly told reporters outside of the lieutenant governor’s office in Raleigh Tuesday.
Robinson is also suing Louis Love Money, a former Greensboro adult video store employee who, along with others, has alleged in published reports that the Greensboro native, when he was in his 20’s, used to come by his shop and another in town, with pizza, and routinely watch pornographic videos.
Money, who is in a band now, stands by his story, even though he also admits using it in a song to help promote his band.
CNN has not responded to Robinson’s claims that its reporting is false and malicious, and seeks to hurt his political campaign for governor. A number of Republicans had urged Robinson to sue CNN if the allegations were indeed false, which he has now done.
However, Robinson has yet to actually prove that CNN’s reporting is false, something his attorney, Jesse Binnall of Virginia, says the lawsuit will attempt to do.
Binnall’s law firm, which Robinson hired last month shortly after the CNN report dropped, once represented former President Donald Trump, reportedly in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
True or not, there’s little question that the CNN blockbuster report has cratered Robinson’s historic campaign to become the first black person to become governor of North Carolina. Prior to that report, Robinson’s campaign had financial support from Republicans and conservatives across the country. Former Pres. Donald Trump, currently in a dead heat with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency, once called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids.” The black conservative culture warrior was regularly heralded on Fox News and other conservative media for his mostly divisive remarks about abortion, and against Jews, Muslims, LBTGQ+, women and blacks.
Before the CNN report, Robinson was running strong against Democratic opponent state Attorney General Josh Stein in most polling. But after the devastating report, Robinson has fallen hopelessly behind by at least 14 points. Funding from the Republican Governors Association to his campaign has stopped, killing his TV advertising. Many prominent Republicans, including Trump, have turned their backs on him. And members of his campaign and executive office staffs have resigned.
With his campaign coffers drained, Robinson has been reduced to traveling the state, campaigning to small numbers of supporters in various locations.. He says given the response, he still expects to win the governor’s race.
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HARRIS-WALZ CAMPAIGN TARGET
EASTERN NC BLACK VOTERS TO
WIN IN NOVEMBER
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
With less than 20 days before the Nov. 5th general elections, and early voting/same day registration starting today across North Carolina, ending Saturday, Nov. 2nd, the Harris -Walz presidential campaign strategy has now turned to Eastern North Carolina to deliver the crucial African-American support needed to secure the state’s 16 Electoral College votes.
Vice Pres. Kamala Harris flew into RDU International Saturday and traveled by motorcade to a Raleigh barbecue restaurant where she met with some of the state's Democratic Black elected officials, as well as faith leaders and community activists, before helping to pack care packages of supplies for survivors of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina.
On Sunday, VP Harris, a Baptist, went to Greenville to attend Black church services and then hold a packed rally for 7, 000 supporters at East Carolina University.
“I will always put the middle-class and working people first,” Harris vowed during her remarks there.
While in Greenville, the vice president also took time to tape an interview with Black journalist Roland Martin for his Black Star Network “Unfiltered’ streaming show, where she talked about her agenda for Black America, and her "Opportunity Agenda for Black male voters."
"I'm going to go everywhere," Harris explained to Martin about why her campaign is targeting rural parts of North Carolina and Georgia. "Folks say, 'Aww, your votes aren't there.' But my people are there!"
This was Harris’ 19th visit to the state during this election cycle. Her previous campaign visit was Sept 12th to Charlotte and Greensboro.
“It’s close here in North Carolina. It always is,” Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat and Harris supporter, recently told CBS’s Face the Nation.”This was Biden-Harris’s closest loss in 2020, only 1.3 percent. So the fact that Kamala Harris, as Vice President of the United States, has been to North Carolina [19 times] shows that she cares about our state. She knows that we are in play.”
Current Republican nominee, former Pres. Donald Trump, only won North Carolina in 2020 over Joe Biden by just 75,000 votes, even though Biden-Harris won nationally.
Many political analysts agree with Cooper that with the race between V.P. Harris and Trump so razor close across the nation, and particularly in the seven crucial battleground states which will decide the next president, winning North Carolina is critical for the Harris-Walz campaign.
Securing Eastern North Carolina’s African-American and rural voter rich region is seen as a must, political observers say.
“No Democratic candidate for president has ever won this state unless they campaigned east of I-95," Bishop William Barber, former president of the NC NAACP, and current president of Repairers of the Breach, said in his “private capacity as a lifelong citizen of North Carolina.”
“The east is critical,” Bishop Barber, who led the Rise Up and Revival GOTV (get out the vote ) Tour from Raleigh to Greenville last Saturday, continued. “North Carolina had over 1 million poor and low wage voters who didn’t vote in the last election, many of whom live in the poorer communities east of 95. Most of them want to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour.”
“The highest percentages of working poor people in North Carolina are in the east,” Bishop Barber continued.
By definition, “Eastern North Carolina” is defined as any of the 41 counties east of Wake County and Central North Carolina geographically, taking in parts of the Sandhills, Southeast, Northeast and Coastal Plain. Key cities in Eastern North Carolina include Greenville in Pitt County; Rocky Mount in Wilson County; and Wilmington in New Hanover County.
“In rural North Carolina, more than 3 million citizens are speaking up this election with a strong voice,” wrote retired First Congressional District Rep. Eva Clayton, who once represented parts of Eastern North Carolina, in a Sept. 25th “Letter to the Editor” in the Daily Reflector newspaper. “It is imperative that Democrats not only hear but actively engage with issues essential to our communities — from access to health care, access to healthy food and quality education to sustainable economics through small businesses and farming.”
“This election offers a great opportunity for Democratic candidates for U.S. president, Congress, governor, lieutenant governor, General Assembly and state superintendent to engage and champion the needs and opportunities of rural citizens,” Clayton, who lives in Warren County, concluded.
North Carolina Democrats admit that in 2020, during the Covid pandemic, they allowed Republicans to beat them at the door-to-door ground game, thus losing several winnable races. But under new NCDP Chairwoman Anderson Clayton, they promise that rural outreach in particular, with canvassing, phone banks, and special trainings for volunteers, are much more aggressive now in 2024.
Plus the campaign is employing the use of digital message billboards covering at least 35% of the state.
Per the Harris-Walz campaign, 20 field offices have been operating across North Carolina in counties like Brunswick, Wayne,Wilson, Burke, Alamance, Johnston, Henderson and Lenoir, with over 12,000 volunteers signed up since Harris announced her candidacy in July.
Former Pres. Bill Clinton has been dispatched to rural counties down east that Trump won in 2020 to speak with smaller groups of voters today during a bus tour, about Harris’ plans to improve the economy if elected.
In addition, Harris’ vice presidential running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is scheduled to campaign in Durham and Winston-Salem today as well to help kick off early voting efforts. Walz last attended a NC rally in Asheville just weeks before Helene hit the area.
Dory McMillan, communications director for the Harris-Walz Campaign, told NC Newsline, “While Trump barely has any organization [in North Carolina] and shares a ballot with MAGA extremists like Mark Robinson, we have built a campaign to win close races.”
McMillan adds that the Trump campaign in North Carolina is “scrambling.”
Sources say expect former Pres. Barack Obama, who campaigned for Harris with a rally in Pittsburgh last week with a special outreach to Black males, to also come to North Carolina on her behalf. He is the last Democrat to win North Carolina for the presidency.
“Large numbers of progressive college students are also at Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, East Carolina University, UNC Pembroke and UNC Wilmington,” Bishop Barber notes. It’s conceivable that Obama could hold a rally at one of those schools to corral the youth vote in the eastern region.
“Harris can win North Carolina,” Bishop Barber maintains, adding that the over million poor and low-wage voters who didn’t cast a ballot in 2020, according to the study, “Waking the Sleeping Giant,” didn’t do so because “…nobody talks to them and their area of issues.”
Trump’s vice presidential running mate Sen. J..D. Vance (R-Ohio) held a town hall in Wilmington Wednesday, following up on Trump’s recent rallies in Wilmington, Fayetteville and Greenville.
With recent presidential polling showing the Trump-Vance campaign gaining a second wind in critical battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona, Eastern North Carolina may hold the path to the White House that the Harris-Walz campaign needs to win in November.
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FEDERAL JUDGE TODAY
TO CONSIDER GOP LAWSUIT
TO DUMP 225,000 VOTERS
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
A federal judge in Wilmington today is expected to hear arguments on a Republican Party lawsuit seeking to remove 225,000 registered voters from North Carolina’s voting rolls, or at least require that those voters cast provisional ballots.
Both the NC Republican Party and the Republican National Committee allege in the suit filed in August that North Carolina violated the Help America Vote Act, a federal law that mandated that prior to December 2023, voters who registered were not required to give either their state driver’s license of social Security number on the forms.
The GOP claims that the NC State Board of Elections allows non-citizens to register and vote, a charge officials with the NCSBE vigorously deny. They are asking the federal court to dismiss the GOP lawsuit.
However, the Republican plaintiffs are also seeking to have their lawsuit moved back to state court where it was originally filed. They hope the GOP dominated state Court of Appeals or state Supreme Court would be likely to hear arguments at some point.
Defendants argue that the issues involving federal voting law, thus the case should remain in federal court.
It is not known when the federal court in Wilmington will issue a decision in the case.
This is one of several lawsuits filed by the GOP in North Carolina challenging the election process of qualifying voters and handling ballots.
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