- [Kelly] New allegations shake the North Carolina Governor's race as Republicans put pressure on GOP nominee Mark Robinson.

We'll examine what this could mean for the rest of campaign 24.

This is State Line - [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[bright upbeat music] ♪ - Welcome to State Lines, I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, Dawn Vaughan of the News and Observer, public relations consultant, Pat Ryan, Mitch Kokai of the John Locke Foundation and Cardinal & Pine, editor in Chief Billy Ball.

Hello everyone.

What a week.

And you know what the top story is?

- Something happened?

- Something happened because Dawn and others, Carolina Journal, WRAL, and CNN, jumped all over a story beginning Thursday of Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson's alleged written comments on an internet website several years ago.

CNN has released some of those comments attributed to Mr. Robinson, where he wrote and called himself a black Nazi expressed a like of transgender pornography and CNN report it has verified Robinson's identity by cross-referencing some terms used online as well as an online name across multiple online platforms.

Mark Robinson released a minute 20 long speech on X Thursday afternoon.

Here are his comments in their entirety.

- Hey guys, Lieutenant Governor Robinson and your Republican nominee for governor as well, of course.

Well, guys, the news media is at it again, my opponent is at it again.

You all have seen the have truths and outright lies of Josh Stein on these ads over and over again.

And now a story leak, a story leaked by him to CNN is appearing.

Now, let me reassure you the things that you will see in that story.

Those are not the words of Mark Robinson.

You know my words, you know my character, and you know that I have been completely transparent in this race and before.

Folks this race right now, our opponents are desperate to shift the focus here from the substantive issues and focus on what you are concerned with to salacious tabloid trash.

We can not allow that to happen.

And folks, we've seen this type of stuff in the past as well.

Clarence Thomas famously once said he was the victim of a high tech lynching.

Well, it looks like Mark Robinson is too, by a man who refuses to stand on stage and debate me about the real issues that face you.

Instead, they want to focus on salacious tabloid lies.

We're not gonna let 'em do that.

We are staying in this race.

We are in it to win it.

And we know that with your help, we will.

God bless you, and we will see you where?

On the campaign trail.

- Alright, starting with you Mitch.

Sure, we have seen this before to Lieutenant Governor Robinson's point, this is a September surprise in October, or October surprise in September, I should say.

What do you make of this, Carolina Journal was the first that I saw that came out with this story on the record in writing as opposed to rumors that were being heard.

Let's start somewhere, dive in with your team's thinking, - Well, this story had been bubbling for a while.

I think some people say they'd started to hear about this last week.

I know that media outlets by the beginning of the week were already working on this.

And really Wednesday into Thursday morning, you were hearing a lot more rumblings about, oh, there's gonna be a big story.

It's gonna come out on a national news network.

It's really going to paint Mark Robinson in a worse light than he already has been painted by some folks because of these, the activity, and if you talked to people about what was the nature of this story, you heard a lot of salacious details and a lot of things that would really make you say, "Really, this is part of the story?"

For the Carolina Journal news team that the thought was okay, beyond the story that CNN apparently has and is going to be breaking at some point Thursday, there's this other story about some people within Donald Trump's campaign, Mark Robinson's own staff, and some other top Republicans who are saying, look, this is the last day that you could actually drop out, withdraw as a candidate.

You should do it for the good of the Republican party, for the good of the state.

Step down, step away from this race, as we know, and as you saw in that commentary, Mark Robinson's not doing that.

He's gonna remain on the ballot, he's gonna remain the Republican nominee.

But the reason that Carolina Journal moved forward with that story was beyond the actual accusations that he has denied, but that CNN has documented pretty well.

There was the additional story of what are Republicans saying and doing about it - As a journalist, with that background, are you buying Robinson's explanation that it could be AI, that it was fake?

What would you, if you're a reporter watching this and reacting, what do you, it's really what you should know, not what you should think, but it is an interesting rebuttal to what we saw on CNN Thursday night, is it's fake somehow according to him, but they seem to have cross-referenced a lot of different names and terms.

- This isn't a funny story at all, but I think a lot of people who are of a certain age heard his comments, and their first thought was that old song by Shaggy, "It Wasn't Me," that you have all of this proof that something is done and he just says, "It's not me."

And, you know, he's sticking with that.

I think that's also part of what he has been saying throughout the campaign when there have been negative attacks on him that, look, these are half-truths, or lies, or taken out of context.

You know what I stand for, you know that I'm gonna stand for North Carolinians.

In that discussion, he talked about how Stein won't debate him when we know that Robinson wouldn't debate any of his Republican opponents in the primary, which makes that kind of interesting.

So, to me, it's part and parcel of how Mark Robinson has operated as a candidate.

Ever since he first got on the scene, he's been a person who's been outside of the establishment, sort of knocking on that door and saying, "We're gonna do things differently."

And standing up to the accusations as well-documented as they appear to be.

And I don't have access to what CNN has, so I can't tell you how true it is.

It seems true from what they have reported, but standing up to that is part and parcel of how Mark Robinson operates.

- Billy, not to nationalize this discussion, very interesting strategy, whoever Stein campaign leaks this to CNN to get it, they choose traditional media over new media when new media and digital media is on the rise.

What do you make of the choice to go old school with this tactic to expose or to try to shed new light on Mark Robinson?

- I think what they... Whoever got this story to CNN, assuming CNN just happened to be going through old pornography websites, whoever got this story to CNN wanted a huge, huge impact, a national audience.

And they wanted those eyes on the fact that Trump is connected with Robinson, and this is a very close race.

I think that was part of the math when they made that decision.

I will say that before I wrote commentaries, I was an investigative reporter for years, and one of the things that I noticed about the CNN story, however, regardless of who brought it to them, they came correct.

They crossed their T's and they dotted their I's, and it's gonna be good luck if you're going to look at this story and make the case that this is all fake and people are after me.

It's gonna be an uphill battle for him.

But I haven't seen a scandal like this in North Carolina for some time.

- Dawn, you have your on take, you have your own leads in this story.

Take us through your process over the last few days to weeks, from inside the legislature, someone who focuses on... You know, from the Capitol Bureau.

- Well, I talked to somebody last week when, you know, there have been rumblings that more and more is coming out about Robinson, a variety of things, not just this.

And somebody said to me, "We've reached the point that, like, there isn't any sort of surprise headline."

But this was.

I mean, like it still takes you... Yeah.

The national news described it as a bombshell, you know, it really was, because, I think, what CNN presented was so thoroughly cross-checked information.

Of course I haven't seen it, you know, like you were saying, it appears to be... Of course, Robinson is denying everything without explaining exactly what...

He didn't say, "That's never been my email address."

He didn't say, you know, like, all of the other...

He didn't give any sort of details.

And I think he used the phrase in the video, he put out minutia, and he also went on CNN and did the... Or, I mean, Remote did the interview where they presented the evidence and he said pretty much the same thing, I feel like, then in the video that he put out to everybody.

And they showed that these are similar phrases that he's used with other things.

But I think the difference this time, is that a lot of it, and I've made an effort to show his controversial "Some people need killing" comment.

I watched that entire speech, I included the full quote, he's talking about World War II, but then he kind of segues to the police and people doing things, and you can include all of that context around a lot of what he said.

But this is different.

If this is what he did, a lot of...

I mean, it's beyond the pale, the type of comments.

And that's obviously why whoever found this information wanted it out there in entirety, where the more you read, the more you gasp as far as what was typed, if it was by him or someone trying to be him.

And, yeah, I mean, the timing would've given republicans an out if he wanted to resign, to put up somebody else, if they had somebody ready, but that's not something he wants to do.

- In the general sense, I'm not gonna put you on the spot, but I wanna ask you a general question.

I have never been an investigative reporter.

When opposition research is out there, and let's just say Team Stein's behind some of this, you have to have a friendly... You know, you have to have somebody doing this.

How does that work when you're a journalist in the scheme of things?

Is opposition research really in-depth?

Does it just set it up for you to write it if you choose to take the bait?

Or does it still require lots of work?

That's what most folks don't know, and I can say from viewers writing me, they appreciate when reporters will let them peak under the hood just a bit.

So I ask you about opposition research and its role in these kinds of issues.

- So people will give things, and I guess some people might do it if they think, like, the... Somebody is friendly to them, or they're just putting it out, and see, like...

I think the strategy is probably more that they want this information out somehow, and they want someone to really scrutinize it, or to not, and get it out there and put it with whatever platform, so people will share... [indistinct] And then, it's, like, "No, I don't think so.

I don't think this is enough.

I don't..." And then, they'll go...

It's called, like, they shop it around to other people when things come out, and different news organizations, different... You know, have different standards of, like, "Is this enough for a story?

Is this part of a story?"

And then, you do your work yourself, you don't just take someone's word for it, you know?

And then, you go through all of that, a very long process, to find out, you know, "Is this, what they're saying, true?

Can I prove this myself independently?

Is that worth it?"

So that's kind of... Yeah, that's where things are.

- Yeah, I mean, I think you have sort of both sides of the equation with...

Between the two of us here, right?

I'm the PR guy, Dawn's a reporter, and so, in a general context, you know, somebody like me would find information that is advantageous to, you know, my candidate, or disadvantageous to the other candidate, and say, "Hey, Dawn, I think that this information is pretty interesting, would it make a pretty good story?"

You know, "Here's what I have.

What do you think?"

And Dawn might say, "Yeah, I think that would be a pretty good story, let me research, and check it out myself, and verify things, and then, ideally, run it," or she might say, "No, you know, it's really..." "It's kinda boring, it's kinda dumb..." [indistinct] "I don't really think that that makes for a very good story," and like anything, the quality of the content can vary based on the candidate, and based on the type of research, and all that sort of thing, but that's sort of the long and short of...

In my opinion, this was a...

I mean, a perfectly executed hit-job, which is, you know...

I don't say hit-job in the context of, "The story is," you know, "Maybe not true," I just say it was a very well-done hit on Mark Robinson.

It was timed perfectly such that he had only a matter of hours to make a decision about whether to stay or leave the race.

There was days and days of rumor-mongering around the political classes in Raleigh, which adds even more impact to the story, and it was buttoned up, I mean, CNN spent maybe a third of their story talking about how they verified things, and why they're pretty sure these comments could be attributed to Mark Robinson, I mean, it was just...

It was a very well-done... - It's also...

It's important to note that, as a reporter, when anybody tells you anything, you have to think, "What's their motivation?"

You know, "Are they doing this...?"

We're talking about opposition research, so the motivation might be clear.

It's not necessarily from the different party, sometimes, it's within the same party, but you always have to think, with anything, with any public relations pitch, with anyone saying, "I heard this," or, "This happened to me," and, like, what's their motivation for sharing that with you?

And you just... We're always...

I mean, it's the nature of the job, you're skeptical, all the time, you know, of everything, and so, that goes into this too, but it seems like, with whatever CNN was provided, or somehow, they got, you know, tipped off, or all of it, they still had to be incredibly skeptical because you don't wanna be wrong, you know, and, well... - What happens if a journalist makes a mistake on a story like this, and they get so-called "played" by a campaign?

What if it was AI, or a smear, or just completely fabricated, and you fell for it?

Would you be like Dan Rather and CBS?

- I mean, it could be a career-ender, yeah, sure.

- You won't be in the business very long if that's what you do.

- Yeah, and you're not gonna do... No one's gonna take that kind of risk if you're, I mean, news organization.

- Yeah, which is why CNN... - They'd get sued.

- Spent so much time going through, "Here's why..." "Here's this connection and that connection, and..." "And this email address is the same as this..." They spent a copious amount of time going through very, almost boring details about why they're, you know, very confident that their story is accurate, for that reason.

- And Pat mentioned the timing, and I don't know how far in advance this was scheduled, but another piece of that timing was the Democratic candidate in this same race, Attorney General Josh Stein, had a news conference the same day where he had a bunch of Republicans who are now Republicans for Stein.

- I mean, Billy, really, I mean, it...

The timing on some of this is very coincidental.

- I mean, it's certainly...

It's well-played politically, but I think more important than the partisan stuff is thinking about what real people actually care about when they're deciding who is going to lead the state of North Carolina, and I do hope that people, instead of just reading about the spin and all the talk about this story, actually go and read it, because Robinson has portrayed himself, as a candidate, as this family man, this very moral, Christian figure, but there are things in there that are backed up and credible that we can't say on this television show, or in many mainstream media outlets, because they're menacing, they're frightening, and talking about peeping on people in the locker room, like, these are things that expose some huge issues with anybody, regardless of your party, and so, I'd encourage people to go read this one.

- Would you encourage adults to do that?

I saw a tweet where... "Be careful about who you hurt by showing and distributing this material 'raw,' if you will," but it is words, and if true, they are truthful words, should see it and be more overt about that, dial back the... "Don't scare people off from reading this," is that what you're saying?

- I'm a believer in truth first.

And I think if people are making choices as voters in this state about who's gonna lead us in a time of emergency in the most important decisions, you should probably know if there's a difference between the person that the candidate is portraying them as and the person who they appear to be behind closed doors.

- There's also something to note about being a security risk.

I mean, this is more of like on the national scale, but vetting, vetting candidates, vetting someone in power where somebody can blackmail you.

Like you need to vet your own people because then you put everyone's security, like literal, like the security of the state, of the country at risk.

If there's something that somebody can use against you, and that's very serious, - Pat as a PR professional, set aside the name Mark Robinson, and this is what happens.

You get this dropped in your lap for a candidate and you're trying to run PR, what do you do?

What would you advise John or Jane Doe to say or do or do a video out there?

- In defense of this, you mean?

- Let's put a hypothetical.

Someone comes in and your candidate John Doe, has been caught with online forum postings and all this.

Pat, whether you like it or not, you can either quit or you can help or you can say, get out.

What would you do in a business term from a business perspective?

- Yeah, so I think there are two things there.

One is the actual response.

Two is, you know, the personal question of whether I wanna continue being affiliated with this type of thing.

I think people who quit, usually you should ride it out.

You know, nobody's gonna blame the PR person.

Nobody's gonna blame the staffer who of course didn't know anything about this.

You sign up for a team, you should finish the game, in my opinion.

But on the second question of how to approach something like this, I think the general sort of standing advice is, at least in, in my opinion, if there is something that's derogatory that's coming out about you, then 99 times out of a hundred, it's best to just own it.

Get more details out in a single story, tell the entire story.

It's gonna be bad, but you just get it all out in one story.

You don't allow things to fester and new information to come out over the course of days and weeks, and you just move on with your life.

Except when that derogatory information is existential in that you're gonna go to jail or you're certainly going to lose your campaign, or you're going to be impeached, or, you know, there's no surviving this story.

You know, in that sense, there's really nothing else that you can do other than deny it.

- What do you make of the PR response?

Mark Robinson went directly to a camera, he looked directly into that camera, which is looking directly at us as we watch it.

What'd you make of that tactically?

- Yeah, I don't think there's really anything more that you can do.

You get your side of the story out there and hope that your defense can stand side by side with, with the contents and the rationale for why the other side says this is true.

I think right now a reasonable person could look at the defense and the rationale for why it's true.

And most people would probably come to a particular conclusion on that.

- Dawn?

- He could like, yeah, he could bring the evidence out of why this isn't, and you don't see a lot of people hold themselves accountable in politics I've noticed, even when it's a very minor thing, you know, I've asked people, what do you disagree with someone on?

What do you regret?

What do you, and it's okay to say, I regret this, to apologize if you're, you know, a religious person, to ask for forgiveness.

You can do that.

And you know, if you're writing something out, instead of acting like you've never done anything wrong in any case, and I've seen that on a lot of different levels of this reluctance to just to admit things, to say you've made a mistake, to say you're sorry.

It's okay to say you're sorry.

- Social media would punish you regardless, I would think, I mean, I get it for journalism.

- Well corrections, we run them on the front page, we own it.

We have to fill out a form where we explain to our bosses why you made this mistake.

And you just, you have to, it's unfortunately that's how a lot of people have to live their lives.

Maybe more people should.

- Mitch, this is a case where Republicans have turned on a Republican candidate.

A good political issue would be Democrats all piling on Republicans creating the firewall and vice versa.

In this case, Republicans are now stepping out and going and weighing in on this issue.

How does that change the game?

And now that the Trump campaigns obviously let it be known, he's not welcome at their events in North Carolina right now, if ever again, how does that change the dynamic of this particular issue?

- Well, I think the thing that Republicans have been looking at, and some of the polling has suggested it, is that Mark Robinson and his decline in the polls and the rise of Josh Stein is having an impact on other parts of the ballot.

And of course, from the party's perspective, their main interest is winning.

That's what the parties do.

They care about winning elections, that's their role.

And so I think Republicans are worried that Robinson potentially hurts Trump, although you think Trump has his own brand and is probably immune to anything from Robinson, but other people up and down the ballot.

Especially in the statewide races.

We've seen in our own Carolina Journal polling, the Democrats have gained four or five points in the last month while Republicans have creeped up maybe one point, which means that a lot of these races that had been led by Republicans are now led by Democrats.

And I think Republicans are trying to now focus on.

How do we limit the damage to Mark Robinson himself and allow everyone else to do as well as they can?

- And Mitch is exactly right, the point of a campaign and the point of a party is to win an election.

So from here on out, you're going to see all the Democrats say, oh, well, you know, Senate candidate so and so is really just Mark Robinson in disguise, or, you know, council of state candidates so and so is super close to Mark Robinson because they want to create this brand association that they hope brings down other Republicans.

The Republicans will be doing the opposite, right?

Trying to distance themselves, perhaps, this is just basic blocking and tackling of politics.

- Our vote- - Yeah, yeah, and and on that front, there is a competitive Wake County State Senate district, State Senate district where we've already seen ads tying the Republican candidate to Robinson.

And that candidate came out with a statement yesterday saying, Robinson, suspend your campaign.

- Yeah, Scott Lassiter, - It should be said however, that the scandals with Robinson, and usually he was battling his own words for most of his campaign, that was what he was fighting.

The scandals with Robinson have been sort of a slow drip for years now, and there have been opportunities along the way during the primaries for the party, the Republican party, to distance themselves from Robinson.

They had a candidate in Dale Falwell who had respect on both sides, and you know, it's hard to say, you know, could've, would've, should've, but probably would be doing better in this campaign right now than Robinson.

- I talked to Falwell, the state, you know, Republican state Treasurer Del Falwell, long time, you know, elected official yesterday, lost to Robinson the primary.

And what Falwell said to me is, I've been saying this about Robinson for a couple years, you know, that he said they're being, the taxpayers are being fleeced by him, and the donors are as well, but Falwell also noted that, you know, a lot of people have already made a bunch of money off of Robinson.

- Dale Falwell also said on CNN, this is up to Donald Trump and Michael Watley, they anointed Mark Robinson.

So they own it, and if there's any pressure to make Mr. Robinson drop out, they should do it.

Is that, is it fair for a former candidate to go on national TV and lay that responsibility at the very top of the GOP ticket?

- It's a fair mean, I think had a broad definition of fair.

I think the treasurer Falwell, I think he has a reasonable point, you know, others can disagree and nitpick with it, like, but that's a reasonable case for someone to make, especially as someone who lost in a primary and was trying, you know, trying to win.

On the question of, of who sort of leads on this, you know, I think if there's going to be an effort to have Mark Robinson drop out of the race, I think most sort of political observers would say that that effort would need to come from the very top of the ticket.

- Yeah Billy, we only have two minutes left in this.

We have been told just anecdotally and subjectively opinion, some lawmakers have been running kind of against Mark Robinson because they didn't, they thought there may be some weaknesses in the campaign, so therefore help us maintain our super majority.

Do you expect that to become more public or will republicans still stay muted in terms of how they handle Mark Robinson out there on the trail, particularly as he goes through their respective counties?

A lot of them are red.

- I think Pat's absolutely right that they're gonna be trying to distance themselves as much as possible.

But I think also when you're running in a local legislative race, you're thinking about the issues that are near and dear to the voters in your town, which is more like things about affordability, about healthcare, the types of things that your constituents are coming to you with.

They're not always coming to you with a political scandal, a political sex scandal to talk about.

So for them, I think the strategy for them is gonna be to focus on those types of issues instead of this scandal at the top of the ticket.

But yeah, I mean, we've seen candidates already who are trying to remove Robinson from their Twitter profile or their Instagram profile and it's not gonna work the internet, the internet feels like forever so.

- Last 30 seconds, Mitch, does this story go away?

Has the bomb been dropped and we'll just go to something else next week, 30 seconds?

- I don't think so.

I think it has at least a little bit of a life and I would not be surprised if there weren't other things that may still be coming out.

The people who have been responsible for getting the information out about Mark Robinson have already done a good job.

My guess is as we get closer and closer to the days of voting, there may be some other shoes to drop.

- Panel, thank you very much.

One topic show, very rare for "State Lines," but I appreciate your patience and this conversation.

Email your thoughts and opinions to us about this StateLines@pbsnc.org.

We'll check out every email.

Thanks for watching.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

We'll see you next time.

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