When Donald Trump endorsed Mark Robinson as the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina in March, he made a generous comparison.
“I think you’re better than Martin Luther King,” Trump told a rapturous crowd in Greensboro, Mr Robinson’s hometown. He also described the candidate as “Martin Luther King on steroids”.
Five months later, in the heat of the presidential campaign, those comments may be coming back to haunt the former president.
Mr Robinson, whose name will be on the ballot next to Trump’s come Nov 5, has turned out to be so controversial that experts warn he is dragging the Republicans down in the polls and could lose them the state.
The endorsem*nt has become a cautionary tale for Trump, whose campaign appears to be bogged down while Kamala Harris enjoys a honeymoon lead in the early stages of the presidential race.
Some Republicans warned Trump in March that Mr Robinson’s track record would wreck GOP chances for regaining the White House and the governorship of North Carolina.
He was already well-known for extreme views, and his attacks on abortion, women’s rights and hom*osexuality had raised eyebrows within his own party.
Since Trump’s endorsem*nt Mr Robinson has courted more controversy by describing hom*osexuality as “filth”, saying transgender women should be arrested for using women’s toilets, and suggesting that dead bodies, cow manure and maggots served more of a purpose than gay relationships.
He also called school shooting survivors “media prosti-tots” for supporting gun-control policies, suggested Michelle Obama was a man, and called reports about the Holocaust “hogwash”.
But the comment that has arguably been most damaging to his campaign was his assertion that abortion is “killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down”.
Mr Robinson’s rhetoric is so extreme he has lost the vote of some of the staunchest Trump supporters in one of the key battleground states of the 2024 election.
Trump won the state by a narrow 1.3 per cent in 2020 and polls from July had shown Mr Biden trailing him in the state by more than five points.
But the latest averages from FiveThirtyEight and Real Clear Politics show Ms Harris has narrowed the gap by 0.3 per cent – and recent polls have shifted the state from “lean Republican” to a “toss-up”.
While Ms Harris has been able to ride her campaign’s momentum, buoyed by easy appearances across the battleground states, Trump is caught between trying to appease his evangelical supporters and appeal to more moderate Republicans.
Whether or not Mr Robinson is unpalatable enough to damage Trump was unclear on a visit to his hometown.
At the Olympic Family Restaurant in Greensboro, where Mr Robinson held a campaign stop earlier this week, Phil Phillips, 75, called him “down to earth” and a “good fellow”, and said his previous comments don’t put him off voting for him.
But at the farmers’ market down the road, Bill Caine, a lifelong Republican, said that while he will vote for Trump this November, Mr Robinson is too extreme for him.
“He’s kind of scary,” he told The Telegraph. “You’ve got to have some tolerance in the world.”
Mr Caine said he plans to split his ticket and vote for the Democratic candidate Josh Stein for governor, while his wife, Vassie Caine, 70, plans to vote Democrat across the board.
The retired nurse said the pair will drive to the polling station together and “cancel each other out”.
Several North Carolina voters said they were unaware about the controversy surrounding Mr Robinson.
Voters cite Trump’s business experience
In Raleigh, Jimmy Lee, 31, a government contractor, who moved to the state’s capital from Fayetteville, said he didn’t know much about the gubernatorial race.
He said he was considering voting for the first time this year. “If I do vote, it will be this year, and if I do vote, it will be for Trump,” Mr Lee said.
“I feel like America is a business, and I feel like it’s well run by a businessman.”
Renata Pratt, 23, an emergency medical technician, who voted for Mr Biden in 2020, said she is considering voting for Trump this year.
As a member of the LGBTQ community, she said she feels the Democratic party aligns more with her values. She is also “a little worried” that the Republicans plan to take women’s rights away.
But Ms Pratt said she could vote for Trump for economic reasons.
“I think that definitely the business side of things is really important for people, especially with inflation and how things are going right now, it’s a little worrisome, so I’m going to keep an open mind”, she said.
Back at the Olympic Family Restaurant, Rob Phillips, Phil’s son, said his wife, a loyal Trump supporter, was put off by Mr Robinson’s comments blaming women “getting their groove thing on” for abortions.
But Mr Phillips, a facilities manager from Kernersville, just outside Greensboro, said he believed the video of Mr Robinson ranting about abortion was “AI-generated”, and he had tried to talk his wife round.
Polls suggest 16 per cent of Republicans plan to split their votes for governor and president compared to 6 per cent of Democrats.
Voters may be ‘turned off’ by Robinson
The latest surveys from Elon University also found 50 per cent of state voters had unfavourable views of Mr Robinson, compared to 29 per cent who saw Mr Stein, 57, who is currently the stature’s attorney general, in a negative light.
Dr Jason Husser, the director of the poll, said it shows Mr Robinson is “far more extreme than the Republican Party as a whole, and I think he’s alienated his own party”.
Dr David McClelland, political science professor at Meredith College, said the “concern” for the Trump campaign is that “Republicans who are so turned off by Robinson may not come out to vote”.
Paul Shumaker, a Republican strategist who was a campaign adviser to one of Mr Robinson’s primary opponents, said he felt Mr Robinson “would not be the best image to represent the party”.
Asked whether his unpopularity could impact Trump, he said: “Is it impacting him today? No. Will it impact him down the line? We will find out.”
The Harris and Trump campaigns are pouring resources into North Carolina after the state appeared to come back into play after Mr Biden dropped out of the race.
“Since Biden is no longer on the ticket, Harris has re-energised the race across the country”, said Dr Husser.
