National Republican groups are pulling financial support for Mark Robinson, the party’s scandal-plagued nominee in the North Carolina governor’s race, as he tries to weather the fallout from a CNN report on inflammatory comments he made on a porn website.
In a statement Monday, the Republican Governors Association acknowledged that after its current media buy expires on Tuesday, “no further placements have been made.”
“We don’t comment on internal strategy or investment decisions, but we can confirm what’s public – our current media buy in North Carolina expires tomorrow, and no further placements have been made. RGA remains committed to electing Republican Governors all across the country,” RGA communications director Courtney Alexander said in a statement.
The decision came after former President Donald Trump did not once mention Robinson during a weekend campaign rally in the Tar Heel State – an indication of how quickly the party is attempting to distance itself from a man Trump had once compared to Martin Luther King Jr.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, campaigned Monday in Charlotte – signaling that Republicans cannot ignore a state that is crucial to Trump’s path to 270 electoral college votes, even with its gubernatorial nominee mired in controversy.
At a campaign stop, Vance refused to say whether the Trump campaign still endorsed Robinson and said that it’s Robinson’s job to make his case to voters.
“I think it’s up to Mark Robinson to make his case to the people of North Carolina that those weren’t his statements, and I’m going to let him make that case,” Vance said.
Robinson also returned to the campaign trail on Monday, the day after his campaign confirmed that several top operatives had quit, including his campaign manager, his top consultant and the leaders of his fundraising and political teams.
Their departures followed a CNN report revealed inflammatory comments Robinson, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, made on a pornography website message board over a decade ago. The lewd comments included Robinson describing himself as a “black Nazi” and how he used to go “peeping” on women at a public gym when he was 14 years old.
Speaking to reporters outside a campaign event in Boone, Robinson said he would not directly answer questions about the report, saying he was “not going to fight that out here, cause that’s what CNN wants us to do.”
“You folks want to focus on tabloid trash and quite frankly I am sick of it and every time I get in front of you, I’m going to cut you off, and tell you, you need to refocus yourself on the issues that matter to people,” he said.
But in another blow to the lieutenant governor’s support, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp will no longer back Robinson.
After the Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained photos of a Robinson fundraiser that Kemp attended last month, spokesman Cody Hall told CNN in a statement: “The governor attended the fundraiser as Vice Chair of the Republican Governors Association and will not be offering further support to the Robinson campaign.”
Some North Carolina Republicans, however, are sticking with the lieutenant governor. Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina told CNN on Monday that he still plans to vote for Robinson for governor, though he called the allegations “very disturbing.”
“I’m going to always vote for Republicans because we have the best platform,” he said.
The North Carolina Republican Party is also standing behind Robinson, issuing a statement Thursday noting that he’d denied making those comments.
North Carolina’s senior senator, though, would not say whether he would vote for Robinson in November. Sen. Thom Tillis said he would instead be squarely focused on helping Trump carry the state and stump for down-ticket candidates.
While he predicted that the Robinson scandal won’t hurt Trump’s bid in the state, Tillis said he is waiting for Robinson “to make a statement one way or the other” and that “if it is true, he needs to move on.”
A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted mostly before the CNN report was published found Robinson trailing his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, by 10 percentage points — an indication that the bombastic lieutenant governor already faced an uphill battle to win the governor’s office.
That’s likely to become even more difficult without air cover from national Republicans.
Ads run by Robinson’s campaign on Google and Facebook, which had been placed consistently for months, had stopped as of this past weekend. CNN has reached out to Robinson’s spokesperson but has not yet received a response.
Through Tuesday, the RGA and its affiliated PAC had combined to spend almost $16 million on the North Carolina governors race, one of the most competitive gubernatorial contests of the cycle. Spending from those national Republican committees had continued up to this week, with the groups combining for more than $1 million worth of ad time per week since July.
Outside spending from those Republican groups, in addition to a series of Democratic outside groups, helped push the contest to rank as the most expensive gubernatorial contest of the year. Since the primary on March 5, through today, the parties – including campaigns and outside groups – had combined to spend nearly $87 million on the race, Democrats outspending Republicans by about $57.9 million to $28.7 million.
With national Republicans pulling out of the race, that disparity is set to expand over the final weeks of the race. From this Wednesday through Election Day, Democrats have $12.5 million worth of ad time booked, while Republicans currently have no future ad time reserved. Robinson’s campaign has spent $10.6 million on advertising since the primary, but doesn’t have any future ad buys as of today.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Morgan Rimmer, Ted Barrett, Manu Raju, Dianne Gallagher and Kit Maher contributed to this report.
