Can Josh Stein beat Mark Robinson in the NC governor's race? Insiders weigh in
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein casts Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson as an extremist. Political insiders say Robinson has a better shot of winning a governor's race than other divisive GOP candidates who came up short last year.
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Supporters of Attorney General Josh Stein certainly have plenty of reasons to believe he can become North Carolina’s next governor.
Since becoming attorney general in 2016, Stein has secured landmark legal victories against drug makers and tobacco companies. He’s one of only a handful of Democrats to have won statewide races in North Carolina in recent years. And he’ll likely face a Republican opponent in Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson who’s known for making controversial statements about women, the LGBTQ community, and abortion — things that could be turnoffs to potentially deciding voter groups.
Robinson could also be vulnerable, Democrats say, because of his affiliation with former President Donald Trump, whose support is seen by some to have hindered far-right gubernatorial candidates in other states last year. Arizona’s Kari Lake and Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano lost their races despite support from Trump, who praised Robinson last year as the two shared a stage in Wilmington.
But some political analysts see a Stein-Robinson contest as being tighter than those other swing states.
“Robinson has some potential to be a toxic general election candidate,” J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said in an email. “But NC is a fundamentally tougher state for Democrats” than Pennsylvania or Arizona, he said.
Unlike Lake and Mastriano, Robinson has won a statewide race — receiving more votes for lieutenant governor in 2020 than Stein did for attorney general. Last year’s midterm elections also showed positive signs for Republicans as they won a big U.S. Senate race and improved their performance in some of the Democrats’ long-held rural counties.
Robinson, a Greensboro native, speaks with an authenticity that many North Carolinians might appreciate, said Jim Blaine, a Republican political strategist. Though Stein has spent most of his life in North Carolina, he may struggle to connect with rural voters the way Gov. Roy Cooper has, Blaine said. Cooper, who was born in Nashville, spent summers on a family tobacco farm and attended UNC-Chapel Hill, could be seen as a more down-home candidate. Stein, the son of a civil rights lawyer, grew up in Chapel Hill and graduated from Ivy League schools.
“I think he has a good chance,” Blaine said of Robinson, who outpolled other potential GOP candidates in a survey last month by Blaine’s consultancy.
In a phone interview with WRAL, former Gov. Pat McCrory said Stein likely announced his gubernatorial campaign early in order to scare off any potential challengers in a Democratic primary.
“He's trying to get it out there that he's the candidate,” McCrory said. “It's a classic move.”
Stein hopes to follow in the steps of Cooper, who served as attorney general for 16 years before winning the 2016 race for governor. Cooper and Stein both use the same political firm, Nexus Strategies, and in 2016 they received nearly identical levels of support in their respective races. Stein received only 5,538 fewer votes than Cooper.
But as Cooper’s vote share rose between 2016 and 2020, Stein saw his fall. Stein received 121,390 fewer votes than Cooper on his way to edging out Republican Jim O’Neill to remain attorney general, in what was the closest Council of State contest of the year.
In suburban counties — where politicians recruit swing voters — Cooper performed markedly better than Stein.
In that group of counties — which includes Cabarrus, Harnett, Johnston and Union, among others – Stein received about 94.8% of Cooper’s support, said Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College. By comparison, Stein got 95.3% of Cooper’s votes in rural counties and 97% of Cooper’s votes in city areas.
“What Stein needs to do is [be] slightly better in the central cities and regain ground in the urban suburbs, while not losing the surrounding suburban counties and keeping the rural counties at the same level,” Bitzer said. “He certainly can squeak out an election victory with his 2020 performance, but it won’t leave much room for error.”
On Wednesday, Robinson’s team tied Stein’s announcement to his performance in the 2020 election.
"It should be clear that Stein is scared of a primary,” said Conrad Pogorzelski, a political strategist for Robinson.
“He won his last election by less than 15,000 votes out of the more than 5 million cast. He is hoping that by creating the narrative that it is him against Robinson, he can avoid a primary,” Pogorzelski said.
For some Republicans, Robinson’s trajectory looks all too familiar: a grassroots candidate with no political experience runs for lieutenant governor, wins, and then comes up short in the governor’s race.
That’s what happened to Dan Forest, the Republican who lost to Cooper in 2020.
“Stein has won two major elections with a strong GOP wind in his face,” said Republican strategist Paul Shumaker, who advised U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis. “Robinson has only won a statewide race with a strong GOP win at his back.”
Many believe Forest fell short because he went too far right in his proposed response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when he called to end many pandemic restrictions.
The governor’s race is “going to be determined by Robinson’s ability to message and convince suburban, college-educated voters that he has the temperament to be governor of North Carolina,” Shumaker said.
The 2024 gubernatorial elections will partially be influenced by a presidential race, and how those candidates are able to inspire turnout. North Carolina voters are notorious ticket-splitters, though, often sending Democrats to the Governor’s Mansion and conservative firebrands such as the late Sen. Jesse Helms to the U.S. Capitol.
The statewide races are almost always close. And, for candidates, the margins for error are thin.
Stein’s political opponents are expected to use his actions in the 2020 election against him. That year, a Stein campaign ad accused Republican Attorney General candidate Jim O’Neill of leaving “1,500 rape kits on a shelf and left rapists on the street.”
O’Neill, the Forsyth County district attorney, said the ad is defamatory because DAs don’t have direct control over rape kits. O’Neill filed a criminal complaint with the state Board of Elections, claiming Stein violated a law prohibiting lies in political ads.
The Wake County District Attorney’s office has pursued the case, even though the state elections board didn’t recommend charges. A federal appeals court last year temporarily blocked enforcement of the law, saying it could affect midterm election campaigns. The next court action in the case is expected before spring.
If convicted of the misdemeanor, Stein would be the first person ever held accountable under the 91-year-old law. The Wake DA’s investigation has drawn the ire of Cooper, who called it an “unprecedented repression of free speech.”
Morgan Jackson, a partner with Nexus Strategies, doesn’t believe the case will be a factor in the 2024 election.
Jackson thinks voters will care more about issues that affect people’s daily lives and impressed with Stein's record, whether it’s “working with victims of sexual assault, whether it’s taking on opioid manufacturers and Big Pharma, going after polluters who poison the water … [or] working with sheriffs and DAs of both parties, in rural counties in urban areas, everyday to figure out how to keep their communities safe.”
With $5 million raised already, Jackson says Stein’s gubernatorial campaign is already off to a good start.
“He's raised twice what Cooper had at this exact point in time in both the 2016 campaign and 2020 campaign,” Jackson said of Stein.
If Stein’s campaign announcement is any indication, he’ll follow a Democratic playbook used to success in several gubernatorial races last year: tout political experience while casting the Republican candidate as a divisive figure, unfit for office.
That’s what Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs did last year, when she edged out Lake. It’s what Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro did to beat Mastriano. And it’s what Stein is attempting to do with Robinson.
The campaign video Stein released Wednesday features audio of Robinson making claims that could offend swing North Carolina voters, including clips of Robinson saying God called David – “not Davida” – to slay Goliath in 1 Samuel, that homosexuality is “filth” and that “abortion is a scourge.”
The 2016 and 2020 wins by Trump, known for his inflammatory speech, show that controversial comments aren’t disqualifiers for North Carolina voters. If Robinson can keep a gubernatorial campaign about the issues, and not himself, political insiders say he’ll pose a serious challenge to Stein.
But Stein’s supporters remain optimistic.
In last year’s gubernatorial races, the Democratic Governors Association boasted the “best showing for the president’s party for any midterm since 1986.” And, since first running for office in 2008, Stein has never lost a race.
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