Why did Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson take down the video that says he might run for Senate?
North Carolina’s lieutenant governor announced just four months into his new job holding public office that he’s considering running for a higher-profile seat.
In a video posted to Facebook Thursday evening, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson said he might run for U.S. Senate.
Then Robinson removed the video just an hour after it was posted, with no explanation.
Robinson didn’t return an email and voicemail on Friday asking about the video. His chief of staff, Conrad Pogorzelski, couldn’t be reached by phone and didn’t return a text.
“I’m coming to you here today from my office,” Robinson said in the three-minute video. “Just want to talk to you about what I’m sure most of you have already heard, about the rumors about me running for the U.S. Senate.”
That reference to his office and other mentions of his office and staff made us wonder: Is Robinson doing campaign work using taxpayer-funded resources, like his state office building or the state employees who work on his staff?
We learned that even if the video was filmed in his office or by staff — and we weren’t able to find out for sure — that wouldn’t necessarily break any laws.
While there is a state law against using taxpayer resources for political reasons, that law only appears to apply to politicians who have “publicly announced an intention to run,” and in the video Robinson clearly says he hasn’t made up his mind yet.
At the very least, the video appears to blur the lines between campaigning and holding public office. This isn’t the first time Robinson, a political newcomer, has blurred the lines of what is appropriate for campaigns. In February, The News & Observer reviewed Robinson’s campaign finance reports and found numerous questionable expenditures and omissions.
Pogorzelski said the mistakes were a “clerical error” and that he was hiring new staff. Robinson gave WRAL the same explanation a year prior.
Pogorzelski ran Robinson’s 2020 campaign for lieutenant governor. He is now paid $121,000 a year by the state for his duties in the lieutenant governor’s office. Robinson makes just under $137,000, as do the state’s other executive branch officials — except for the governor who makes just under $155,000.
The previous lieutenant governor, Dan Forest, also drew controversy for potentially blurring the lines between politics and governing. WRAL reported in 2017 that a “dark money” group with secret donors paid for a television studio to be installed in the lieutenant governor’s office.
However, Forest said he only ever used that studio for videos related to his official duties, not campaign duties. If that studio still exists, it does not appear to be what Robinson used for his own campaign video Thursday.
Who is Mark Robinson?
Robinson is just the second Black person to ever sit on the Council of State, the group of elected officials who run North Carolina’s executive branch. And he’s the first Black Republican to win any major office in North Carolina since Reconstruction.
He’s also a political newcomer who rose to stardom as a regular citizen in 2018. He went viral online for a speech about gun rights to the Greensboro City Council, as officials were thinking about canceling a gun show in town following a school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
“I’ve never done anything like that,” Robinson told the city council. “But it seems like every time we have one of these shootings, nobody wants to put the blame where it goes, which is at the shooter’s feet. You want to put it at my feet.”
Despite portraying himself as a gun owner during that speech, he wasn’t, although he told The News & Observer last year that he had since become a gun owner.
Robinson’s fiery personality is what has drawn supporters to him, with his passionate speeches and candid statements, but it has also landed him in hot water at times.
His social media history is filled with inflammatory posts and conspiracy theories. He also supported an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory during a video he filmed with the leader of the Unification Church, which some consider a cult.
The group’s leader, Rev. Sean Moon, told Robinson his theory that a Jewish family, the Rothschilds, secretly controls the world economy and is also one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — along with Islam, China and the CIA.
“That’s exactly right,” Robinson responded. “It’s amazing to me, that we live in this age of information where you can go online and you can find all this information, and it’s not hidden from anybody.”
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Pandora, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Megaphone or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published April 16, 2021 at 6:05 PM with the headline "Why did Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson take down the video that says he might run for Senate?."
