Dem
49
GOP
51
Sometimes things people did a long time ago come back to haunt them when they go into politics. Republicans have tried to make a big deal out of Gov. Tim Walz' (DFL-MN) DUI arrest in 1995. But he is not the only politician with a past. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R-NC), who is running for governor of his state, has one, too.
Robinson is making a big pitch to evangelicals due to his strong sense of morality, including his staunch opposition to pornography. In a classic case of "he doth protest too much, methinks" investigative reporters have discovered that in the 1990s and 2000s, Robinson was a major customer of a Greensboro, NC, porn shop. Six eyewitnesses have told reporters that Robinson regularly came in five nights a week to "preview" new porn movies in a private booth for $8. One of the witnesses, a store employee named Louis Money, said that Robinson was a big spender at the store. He knew the employees so well that he sometimes brought them a pizza. He also bought hundreds of dollars worth of bootleg porn videos. The ironic thing here is that due to this generosity (and his big spending ways), they remember him very plainly. If he had been a tad more discreet, maybe they would have long since forgotten him. Don't say that this site never has useful life lessons for readers.
In his memoir, Robinson noted that he was guilty of bad money management. That is a somewhat oblique reference to his filing for bankruptcy three times between 1998 and 2003. At least we now know where his money went. He was supporting a local small business—an honorable thing to do, of course.
Will this matter? It could. Sometimes presidential races have coattails that help down-ballot candidates, but it can also work the other way. Current polling has Robinson's Democratic opponent, North Carolina AG Josh Stein, leading by 9 points based on the average of 46 polls. And the story about Robinson's porn consumption and related bankruptcies isn't going to improve his standing with evangelicals much. Stein could possibly have coattails that help Kamala Harris in the Tar Heel State, since there is no Senate race there this year. (V)