Mark Robinson’s not the only Republican planning a campaign for NC governor

As North Carolina’s Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson prepares to make his run for governor official, another prominent Republican is planning to join him in the 2024 GOP primary election.

Former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker is expected to announce his run next month. Along with Robinson, he’ll join State Treasurer Dale Folwell in the Republican primary.

That makes a primary with three candidates who have very different approaches to politics and governing. So far, Robinson has been considered the frontrunner.

All three have recognition across the state in a variety of ways: Robinson for the bully pulpit of the lieutenant governor’s office and controversial comments about LGBTQ+ people, Folwell for his longtime work in state government, and Walker for his time in Congress and a run in last year’s GOP primary for the U.S. Senate seat won by Sen. Ted Budd.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is in his second term and thus cannot run for a third consecutive term, leaving the field open. So far only one Democratic candidate has declared: Attorney General Josh Stein, who was long expected to run, like Robinson. With a rally planned for Saturday at a racetrack, Robinson is expected to make official what he has talked about constantly for months, from speeches to his autobiography — he wants to be governor.

Walker will announce his run officially in the coming weeks, likely in May, according to a firm advising him.

Walker’s upcoming run

Advising Walker is Tim Murtaugh of National Public Affairs, a firm whose partners include several former Trump campaign officials, including Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager in 2020.

Murtaugh, who also previously worked for the Trump campaign, said National Public Affairs is only advising Walker, not running his campaign as Walker is still forming it. That means Walker does not yet have a campaign website and has not started raising money for the run, according to Murtaugh.

Though the firm has former Trump campaign staff, that doesn’t mean that Walker’s run would come with a Trump endorsement. Trump encouraged Walker unsuccessfully to run for the U.S. House in 2022 rather than try for the Senate. In the Senate race, Trump endorsed Budd, who went on to win with Walker finishing in the single digits.

“President Trump will do what President Trump will do,” Murtaugh told The News & Observer in a phone interview on Thursday.

Robinson has joined Trump at rallies and embraced Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) wing of the Republican Party.

Robinson’s rise in politics

North Carolina government doesn’t give much power to the job of lieutenant governor. The office is elected separately from governor, which means different political parties can win the two roles. That’s the case now with Cooper and Robinson, and with the previous lieutenant governor, Republican Dan Forest. Forest lost to Cooper in 2020 in a race dominated by the coronavirus pandemic response.

For the lieutenant governor primary the same year, it was a crowded field with 17 candidates in the primary from both major parties. While the Democratic primary that year was close, Robinson handily won the Republican primary. It was his first time running for office, after gaining fame through a viral video at a Greensboro City Council meeting about gun rights.

Since then, Robinson’s words on video have also brought much criticism, particularly his inflammatory comments about LGBTQ+ people, including calling transgenderism and homosexuality “filth,” The N&O previously reported.

Robinson was also behind a 2021 Senate bill that regulates how race is taught in public schools, though he was not involved in similar legislation in the Senate this year, according to Senate leader Phil Berger.

Berger was expected to give the Republican response to Cooper’s State of the State address in March, but Robinson was the one who gave the recorded response. The lieutenant governor serves as Senate president, even though the president pro tempore, currently Berger, is generally considered the leader of the Senate.

Robinson’s State of the State response speech focused more on Republican policies supporting the economy and education than anything controversial. In another speech this year in Raleigh at the March for Life, speaking to anti-abortion supporters, Robinson spoke in general about wanting to make North Carolina “a destination for life” rather than abortion, as North Carolina’s abortion law is not as strict as some neighboring states.

As lieutenant governor, Robinson’s role is to preside over the Senate, only voting if there is a need to break a tie. That occasion has not arisen during his tenure. Berger presides most of the time. Robinson has an office in the Legislative Building where there is a conference table but no desk; his main office is a few blocks away.

Treasurer Folwell’s years in office

Folwell served in the state House from 2005 to 2013. He has been state treasurer since 2017, serving on the Council of State with Robinson, Cooper, Stein and the six other statewide elected officials. He talks often about being the keeper of “the public purse.”

He spoke to reporters this week about his campaign, which he announced in March.

”From the age of 10, I’ve been breaking a sweat, both to get myself out of my economic situation and as a public servant to protect and work on saving lives,” Folwell said of running against a candidate like Robinson, who has more financial backing.

“When you’ve been breaking a sweat all your life, you obviously know where people sweat and you know why they sweat. That’s my track record of attacking problems and not attacking people,” Folwell said.

What do elected Republicans think?

Many politicians stay out of primaries in their own parties, with plenty of exceptions, from Cooper in a state Senate race last year to the Republicans who ousted former U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn.

N.C. Sen. Vickie Sawyer, an Iredell County Republican, said her politics mentor “taught me the best way to lose my race was to get into somebody else’s race. So I tried not to ever comment on that.”

While Sawyer didn’t say who she would support in a gubernatorial primary, “the polling there just looks like Mark Robinson is so far ahead.

“You know, he’s gonna be a hard one to beat, but I do appreciate that others are getting in because it does give a different idea about the firebrand versus the standard, true statesman of someone who’s been, you know, doing budgets before,” she said, referring to Folwell as the statesman.

House Speaker Tim Moore said without knowing “who all will will be running, certainly it’s good that we have a lot of great choices that we can pick from as Republicans.”

Moore said he hasn’t “made an assessment” of Robinson and Folwell as candidates yet.

“We’ll let that work itself out. They’re both good men, good Republicans. And they both could do the job well,” he said.

Rep. Jon Hardister, a Guilford County Republican, told The N&O earlier this week that he likes both Folwell and Robinson, saying they are qualified.

“Mark Robinson is very popular with the grassroots, but you can’t underestimate Treasurer Folwell,” Hardister said. “I mean, he is a statewide elected official. He was one of the top vote-getters in the state in the last election. And he’s tenacious, very intelligent. Mark Robinson has made a name for himself. And they both, I expect will run very strong campaigns.”

He doesn’t plan to take a public stand at this point, he said, and has his own Republican primary to worry about. Hardister, in his sixth term in the House, is running for labor commissioner. He said Folwell and Robinson are “totally different.”

Regarding Robinson’s inflammatory comments, Hardister said he once brokered a conversation between Robinson and members of the Jewish community in Greensboro after they reached out wanting to hear from Robinson, who Hardister said told them he was not trying to be offensive.

Hardister said he doesn’t police what other people say and can only speak for himself.

Hardister said Robinson is “very opinionated and expresses his opinions. But we are a big tent party. And, you have the establishment type, you’ve got the libertarian type, you have the Chamber of Commerce type, if you will, which, I think it’s a good thing. But at the end of the day, the voters are going to decide in the primary who they want to nominate.”

Reporter Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi contributed reporting.