Nearly all of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's campaign staff quits after CNN report

MicroWave@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 470 points – Nearly all of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's campaign staff quits after CNN report
wunc.org

Days after a CNN report about racist and sexual comments posted on a pornography forum, all but a few of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's campaign team quit their jobs on Sunday.

A campaign news release said that four top staffers have left the campaign: Conrad Pogorzelski, general consultant and senior advisor who's worked for Robinson since his initial 2020 lieutenant governor campaign; Chris Rodriguez, campaign manager; Heather Whillier, finance director; and Jason Rizk, deputy campaign manager.

But WUNC has confirmed that other staffers have quit as well, leaving Robinson with just three people working on his campaign — two campaign spokesmen and a bodyguard. The list of departures also include longtime director of operations Patrick Riley and political directors John Kontoulas and Jackson Lohrer.

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It’s weird; I didn’t see a single ad for Robinson here in NC until after the scandal broke

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, he has all the money he was paying them free to spend now....

My guess is frequency illusion

Might make sense if I hadn’t been painfully aware of his existence for months before this latest incident.

There’ve actually been a lot of anti-Robinson ads ever since the primary.

Maybe the opposition stopped bothering advertising against him so hard.

Or move they’re working on new ads that are coming this week.

Is actually better for Dems if he doesn’t drop out of the race (I think the deadline to replace him on the ballot is Thursday). So if we’re quiet and force him to stay on the ballot, it will help us for both the presidency and governor race.

better for Dems if he doesn’t drop out of the race

Need to be careful with this kind of thinking - that was the Dems' attitude towards Trump during the 2016 election.

True, hopefully this doesn’t breed some form of complacency among Democrat voters. It should help D turnout against him, which would help down ballot.

Lucky you. I started seeing them months ago. They paint him as this innocent Southern man of humble origins. Tbf, I don’t remember seeing one of them within the past month or so, so maybe they’ve actually died off in some places,

Dear MAGA SuperPACs, I've received more of your mailings than credit card offers and bills combined over the past four month. Though the gaslighting offered by them frequently cause me to laugh out loud at your brazen lies, I still tire from seeing that treasonous pumpkin of a candidate you have in my mailbox. As 99% of these mailings get torn up and thrown straight into my outside recycling bin, you are more than welcome to stop mailing me. Thank you, committed Harris voter in North Carolina.

This is an example of why I think it's wrong that getting rid of Trump would just mean someone else takes his place. If this happened to Trump--and it basically has several times already--it would play out in the media for a few days, and then he'd do something incredibly stupid and headlines would forget about it.

However, when this happens to any other Republican, they're quickly abandoned. Like what used to happen to all Republicans or Democrats when they become politically radioactive.

Trump is a special case. He hit just the right resonance with just the right number of people to have a base of support, and then also have a bunch of other people who passively go along with it. He is not so easy to replace. Oh, someone will try, probably several someones. They'll eat each other in the attempt and go nowhere.

DeSantis took a good shot at being Trump 2.0. He had the media attention, truckloads of money, a bully pulpit he used to attack "Wokeism" 24/7 while implementing actual hard right policies. On paper, he should have attracted MAGA voters, at the very least as a possible successor to Trump. Instead, it just... didn't work.

Trump captured lightning in a bottle in 2016. He was able to present himself as this John Galt-like figure while also leveraging his media savvy to control narratives and dominate coverage. Obviously, not everyone bought it, but enough did to win the election. No one on the right has those qualities now. It may not even be possible to duplicate. At this point, even the 2024 version of Trump is failing to live up to 2016 Trump.

Unless the other candidate satisfies Worthington's Law: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Worthington%27s_law

Not even kidding.

Donnie might not even have billions, but millions of people support him because they think he's rich and they think he's somehow worthy of that money. If some other racist loudmouth billionaire comes along, the qons will be lining up to give him a soft job, too.

what baffles me is not that someone does this (not that i condone that) but that person in his position does that signed with his work email (or email that isn't total burner)

In any other timeline I'd think he would have no chance. But really, how many of is would be really and truly shocked if he won anyway? Surprised? Sure. But actually shocked?

republicans in NC just can't stop offering up completely unelectable psychos and/or morons as their candidates. these are the dicktips who thought madison fucking cawthorn was a great idea

Hell, cawthorn and his talk of cocaine and sex parties looks looks tame by comparison.

Is he unelectable, though?

because it's a cult, dear great leader trump is the only one who's completely unaffected by scandal. small time nobodies like mark robinson aren't. look at madison cawthorn. george santos. christian ziegler. though loyalty is more important than anything else to them, their 2 brain cells rubbing together at least recognizes that this toxic goon will do literally nothing to help the republican party, and everything to make them even more hated than they already are. even fucking trump wants nothing to do with him

completely fucking unelectable

I'm just saying. Total dregs like Marg and Qbert got elected even though they are not qualified, but because they were in deeply red areas. There are many Republicans that will vote for a potato with an R next it.

"Yeah, he said he's a black Nazi and watches tran[s] porn, but my Diaper-wearin' Golden God Emperor endorsed him! Besides, I couldn't possibly vote for a Democrat, they are just so extreme!"

Are the staffers who quit still Republicans? Yeah? No points for integrity then. You were getting paid to make the world worse, and now you're getting out because you got caught.

Hoping these events in both NC and GA move the needle for Harris.

Don’t give up, Mark!

#RobinsonStrong

That’s right, Mark! Keep fighting to get Stein elected. You’re doing a great job! 😂

I live in rural NC and still see a bunch of signs for him around. I still think he's going to lose, but I know my county will probably still be like 75% Trump and Robinson voters.