Now that North Carolina Republicans finally have their 2024 gubernatorial nominee, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, the Republican Governors Association (RGA) is going on offense against Attorney General Josh Stein. The RGA is up with a new website called “The Real Josh Stein,” first shared with National Review, that highlights the Democratic nominee’s liberal record and ties him to President Joe Biden, who is unpopular in North Carolina and narrowly lost the state in 2020 to former president and likely 2024 nominee Donald Trump.
Both parties are bullish on this toss-up race for term-limited Democratic governor Roy Cooper’s seat in a state that skews red in presidential elections but blue in gubernatorial ones. The race is expected to be expensive, competitive, and bitterly partisan.
It’s unclear how much the RGA will spend in North Carolina on behalf of the GOP’s 2024 gubernatorial nominee, Mark Robinson, the state’s first black lieutenant governor, who sailed to victory in Tuesday’s primary. The RGA released a statement after Robinson’s Tuesday night victory congratulating him on his primary victory and adding that the committee looks forward to “supporting him in the general election.”
As NR has reported at length, Robinson is expected to face challenges with voters for his dicey personal-finance history and his penchant for controversial remarks in old social-media posts and on the trail — which include calling Parkland school shooting survivors-turned-gun-control advocates “media prosti-tots” and comparing gay people to “what the cows leave behind.” Many Republicans on the ground have privately warned for months that the lieutenant governor’s incendiary rhetoric will serve as perfect advertising and fundraising fodder for Stein ahead of November. Just last week, liberal North Carolina donor Todd Stiefel pledged in an interview with NR to pour $1 million from his own pockets into a “Mark Rottenson” parody campaign — complete with a website and digital advertising — satirizing the GOP candidate for his controversial rhetoric.
Even still, months of head-to-head polling matchups between Stein and Robinson suggest the race currently is a dead heat, with many surveys showing the GOP nominee with a narrow edge.
In the meantime, the RGA hopes that tying Stein to Biden will boost Robinson’s chances. The committee’s new anti-Stein website reminds voters that the Democratic attorney general endorsed the first-term president’s 2020 campaign and stumped for him in the days leading up to the election, and also gives prime real estate to a social-media post from August 2020 in which Stein said he was “excited” that then-senator Kamala Harris was joining Biden’s national ticket as his running mate. The website also knocks the state’s top law-enforcement official for his public-safety failings, North Carolina’s opioid crisis, and for praising Governor Cooper’s pandemic policies for K–12 schools.