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Down-ballot NC Democrats scramble to make their races all about Mark Robinson

Rachel Hunt, the Democratic candidate for lt. governor, is running a commercial linking her Republican opponent, Hal Weatherman, to Mark Robinson. She holds a bottle of bleach suggesting she will disinfect Robinson's office when she wins.
Rachel Hunt campaign
Rachel Hunt, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, is running a commercial linking her Republican opponent, Hal Weatherman, to Mark Robinson. She holds a bottle of bleach suggesting she will disinfect Robinson's office when she wins.

There are many statewide races that are under the radar.

Auditor. Insurance commissioner. Even lieutenant governor.

“A lot of (voters) don’t know what the lieutenant governor is, don’t know that they aren’t on the slate with the governor, don’t know what their duties are and don’t know they are important,” said Mecklenburg state Sen. Rachel Hunt, the Democrat running for that office.

Hunt should be well known.

Her father, Jim Hunt, was North Carolina governor for four terms in the 1970s and 1980s. But Rachel Hunt acknowledges that in a state with millions of transplants and a median age of 39, not many people know that, or care.

At a Kamala Harris rally in Charlotte last month, Hunt was a warm-up speaker. When she mentioned her father was Jim Hunt, the crowd didn’t applaud.

But Hunt said she does have a strategy to break through: Talk about the current Republican lieutenant governor.

“All I have to say is, ‘Look at what Mark Robinson has done,’ ” she said. “And that’s been incredibly helpful because everyone in the country knows who he is and what he’s done.”

Hunt has spent $2 million on a commercial that compares her opponent, Republican Hal Weatherman, to Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor. CNN linked Robinson to a number of highly offensive posts on a forum of a pornographic website a decade ago.

Robinson has denied making the posts and has sued CNN.

In the ad, she’s standing by a janitor’s closet holding a bottle of bleach. She said that “since I’m moving into Mark Robinson’s office, I’ll start with a gallon of this.”

Hunt said her strategy was always to link Weatherman to Robinson. After the CNN story, she doubled down.

“I think everyone understands that linking Robinson to their candidates is very important,” she said. “That’s what’s going to move the needle in these races.”

Other Democrats are doing the same as Hunt, like Democratic attorney general candidate Jeff Jackson. His campaign scrambled to create a new ad that focuses on Republican Dan Bishop’s support for Robinson.

The Democratic candidate for labor commissioner, Braxton Winston, quickly noted that his opponent, Luke Farley, had taken down all social media photos of him with Robinson.

“Even though there hasn’t been an actual coordinated meeting, we have all been of the same mindset,” Hunt said. “Many of us use the same consultants and they’ve all consistently said you gotta tie your person to Robinson.”

Weatherman couldn’t be reached for comment, but he’s criticized the commercial online for what he says are racial undertones of a white woman using bleach to cleanse the office held by a Black man.

Before the CNN story, Weatherman and Robinson shared a yard sign that suggested they were running as a ticket. And he’s one of the few Republicans to appear with Robinson since the scandal, sharing a stage with him at a town hall in mid-October in Marion.

Bishop complained at a late September rally for Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance that “Democrats and allied media rolled out a meticulously-timed, coordinated character assassination and immediately sent mailings, ads, broadcasts and posts smearing all Republicans by association while claiming the high ground.”

Elon University released a poll Tuesday showing Donald Trump and Kamala Harris tied in North Carolina. Those same voters favored Democrat Josh Stein in the governor’s race by 21 percentage points over Robinson.

That’s a massive difference, says Jason Husser, director of the Elon poll.

“We would have to go back 20, 30 years before seeing anything close to what we are seeing in terms of split-ticket voting,” Husser said.

He said Robinson’s negatives are so high that he could sink other statewide Republican candidates. In the Elon poll, Democrats had modest leads in the races for lieutenant governor, attorney general and superintendent of public instruction.

Republican down-ballot candidates could be hurt by Trump voters voting against them because of Robinson. Or they could be hurt when voters skip the rest of the races after the governor’s contest.

“Trump might win North Carolina and then you could see Democrats sweeping most of those statewide offices,” he said. “We are entering a race where we could see a really weird outcome.”

Adding to the weirdness of this election is that more Republicans than Democrats have cast ballots during early voting — something that’s never happened.

Early voting has made Dallas Woodhouse, the former executive director of the state Republican Party, confident that Trump will win the state. As for the other races?

He said Democrats are trying to “completely sully up every single Republican running for every single office from lieutenant governor to dog catcher because they met Mark Robinson; they are in the same party as Mark Robinson; because they both eat French fries. Does that work?”

Woodhouse said he doesn’t think voters will punish Republican candidates for Robinson’s problems.

The Democrats' Robinson strategy is being extended far down the ballot.

Mecklenburg County has one competitive state Senate seat. The Republican, Stacie McGinn, has criticized the Democratic candidate, Woodson Bradley, over being a top salesperson at a company that was shut down by the federal government for being a pyramid scheme.

The Bradley campaign has countered by trying to link McGinn to Robinson.

McGinn says the comments are “beneath the office of the lieutenant governor and governor” but not relevant to her race.

“He is running his race, I am running my race and focused on my race,” she said.

Early, in-person voting ends Saturday at 3 p.m.

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Steve Harrison is WFAE's politics and government reporter. Prior to joining WFAE, Steve worked at the Charlotte Observer, where he started on the business desk, then covered politics extensively as the Observer’s lead city government reporter. Steve also spent 10 years with the Miami Herald. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Sporting News and Sports Illustrated.