Mark Robinson, Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina and candidate for Governor, delivers remarks prior to Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaking at a campaign event at Harrah’s Cherokee Center on August 14, 2024 in Asheville, North Carolina.
Grant Baldwin | Getty Images
The political network largely funded by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch has been quietly backing North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson despite a litany of controversies, according to records uncovered by CNBC.
The Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity ran digital advertisements supporting Robinson as recently as this month. It’s also funded pro-Robinson door knocking, launched a website that encouraged voters to thank him for his work as lieutenant governor, interviewed him on a podcast and hosted him for an April event featuring Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C..
The digital ads started to run on Sept. 1 and continued to air into Sept. 14, according to AdImpact. The ads aired just weeks before CNN reported on racist and graphic comments Robinson allegedly posted on a porn forum over a decade ago.
Though Robinson has denied he wrote the scores of posts, at least four of his top aides from his North Carolina gubernatorial campaign resigned within days of the report’s publication. The National Review reported a total of eight staffers have resigned.
As of Monday, Robinson had refused to withdraw from the race, where he is trailing Democrat Josh Stein by an average of 9.5 percentage points, according to a Real Clear Politics average.
The Republican Governors Association said Monday that it has no plans to make further ad buys on Robinson’s behalf in the state.
Americans for Prosperity ran supportive ads after many of Robinson’s controversial comments. In February, for instance, Robinson suggested that transgender women should be arrested if they used women’s bathrooms.
The move by Americans for Prosperity to back Robinson from a policy perspective surprised some North Carolina Republican strategists.
“We’ve seen for months this wasn’t going to be a close race, even before Labor Day,” said Jonathan Bridges, a state Republican strategist who used to work for Robinson’s primary rival, former Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C. “Why would they still do anything after Labor Day? If I was in that position, I probably wouldn’t do that.”
AFP’s effort to support Robinson represents a shift for the group, after the organization’s state office opted out of backing him during his initial run for lieutenant governor in 2018, according to Chris McCoy, who served as AFP’s North Carolina state director until 2022.
“They were superficial conversations and nothing deep,” McCoy said in describing the deliberations at AFP’s state level on whether or not it should back Robinson. “The concept was going to be dead before it got off the ground. I wouldn’t have even tried. Robinson is a polarizing character.”
Fast forward six years, however, and Robinson won the…