The most-read newspaper in North Carolina called on the state's Republican Party to withdraw its support from gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson over a series of troubling reports about his background.
The lieutenant governor won the GOP primary over two more qualified candidates in a "fit of MAGA fever," the News & Observer's editorial board wrote, and they called on Republicans to "concede their party's error" and endorse Democratic nominee Josh Stein, who is currently the state's attorney general.
"Most people don’t live like Robinson," the editors wrote. "They pay their rent. They pay their debts. They pay their taxes. And when they are questioned, they come forward. They don’t stonewall or repeatedly walk away from what they owe."
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Robinson has been evicted for not paying his rent in the past, declared bankruptcy three times, and failed to file income taxes between 1998 and 2002, and the state Department of Health and Human Services recently announced that a nonprofit run by his wife must repay $132,000 for submitting disallowed expenses to a federally funded child care meal program.
"The Balanced Nutrition issue follows upon a recent disclosures that Robinson and his wife ran a Greensboro child care center in the early 2000s that was cited for a raft of violations," the newspaper reported. "Those violations included claims that the center presented falsified documents showing that staff had passed training requirements and criminal background checks. DHHS took no further action after Robinson and his wife gave up the business in 2007."
Robinson has dismissed the DHHS penalty, which could grow larger as the investigation continues, as a "politically motivated" hit by a “Democrat-run state agency," but the newspaper noted the questionable charges were found as part of a standard compliance assessment and pointed out that his wife Yolanda Hill had refused requests for a meeting on the matter with state officials.
"Social conservatives swooned over Robinson because he is adamant about gun rights, opposed to abortion rights, critical of gay and transgender people, skeptical about the Civil Rights Movement and willing to say that public school teachers are indoctrinating children with liberal ideology," the editorial board wrote.
"But soothing some people with what they want to hear shouldn’t be enough," the editors added. "Candidates should also be assessed based upon what they’ve done, or haven’t done. Conservatives can no longer pretend that Robinson passes that latter test. He’s not deserving of office or of their vote."
