About an hour into the 11 a.m. Sunday service, Bishop Patrick Wooden of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, North Carolina, stood at the pulpit in a deep plum suit. The music had quieted, the morning announcements had ended, and now the bishop said he had something to say.
“Everybody’s talking about Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson,” Wooden said, explaining to the congregation that he got a call from a local reporter on Friday and that the press corps — me — was sitting among them that morning. “I called him on Friday and told him the story myself,” Wooden said of Robinson.
Robinson has been a highly controversial figure in North Carolina, with a history of statements that have been widely criticized as anti-Semitic and anti-gay. That was the case long before his gubernatorial bid was upended last week by a CNN report that he had called himself a “black Nazi” and praised slavery while posting to a pornographic site between 2008 and 2012. Now some of his supporters are abandoning him. Most of his campaign’s senior staff have resigned. The Republican Governors Association said ads endorsing Robinson expire tomorrow and that no new ads are being run. And former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Robinson in the spring by calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids,” didn’t mention him once at a rally in the state over the weekend.
Four days after the report was released, Robinson stressed he had no plans to drop out of the race, and his visit to the Upper Room Church, a deeply conservative black evangelical church with outspoken leaders he’s grown close to over the years, offered a glimpse into where he still has support.
Robinson has long visited conservative churches like this one, using them as a platform to promote a message that closely aligns with their views. And on Sunday, Wooden made it clear he has no intention of abandoning the man who carries that message. Wooden said Robinson denied making the posts shown in the CNN report and said he believes Robinson over the media. But Wooden’s defense has focused more on the current qualities of the man he’s come to know than on any staunch denial of the allegations.
“I don’t know his life before 2020, so I can’t speak to him. I can only speak to the time I knew him,” Wooden told the congregation. “All I know, all I know about him is that he’s an honorable man, he’s a great leader, he’s a warrior, he’s fighting for our children.” The congregation began applauding.
An ally flaming in public
Religious support for Robinson has been far from universal, with many religious leaders condemning him both before and after the CNN report.
My colleagues documented in March how Robinson’s political rise was fueled by a relentless effort to appeal specifically to white and black evangelical Christians. He traveled from church to church, delivering outrageous, quotable speeches that unveiled his vision of right-wing politics. The same accusations that worried more traditional Republicans excited the leaders of these churches; they now had a public ally who didn’t mind the political backlash.
One of those speeches was delivered here in the Upper Room in August 2021. With Wooden standing behind her, Robinson denounced the transgender rights movement as “satanic” and spoke about abortion.
“That baby in your belly is not a mass of cells,” Robinson said, as the congregation applauded and cheered. “If you kill that baby, you’re guilty of murder.”
That speech, and another in the summer in which he said “no one should tell kids they’re transgender or gay or any of that filthy stuff,” sparked calls for Robinson to resign, which he resisted.
When I requested to meet with Wooden after yesterday’s service, a man wearing a security badge initially asked me to leave and not proceed. A few minutes after I returned to my car, the man found me in the parking lot and told me that Wooden had decided to speak with me after all.
Wooden has long been an outspoken opponent of abortion and gay rights, denouncing both during his Sunday services and preaching sermons against both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama. In his office, Wooden said he learned about Robinson, like many others in North Carolina, from a 2018 video recorded at a Greensboro City Council meeting in which Robinson delivered a stern and memorable denunciation of gun control.
“I’d seen him online, but I didn’t know him,” Wooden said, then Robinson showed up at his church one Sunday after Wooden invited him to speak after Robinson was elected lieutenant governor.
“It wasn’t his idea,” Wooden told me. “It was all my idea. It was a really great night, and to this day, with everything that’s happened, I have no regrets whatsoever.”
Wooden sees Robinson as a champion for causes close to his heart, and suggested during the conversation that he believes there is a way forward for Robinson’s campaign even if the posts are true.
“If he has admitted to what he did and asked for forgiveness, then the fight he is currently fighting is still valid,” Wooden said, praising Robinson for “trying to save babies, trying to save children, trying to save lives.”
“Hopefully we haven’t heard the worst yet,” Wooden later added.
A zealous defender
Everyone I interviewed outside Wooden’s office said they supported Robinson, citing his opposition to abortion, and suggested they were willing to ignore reports about his past online activity.
“No black person is a Nazi,” EJ Alston said.
“Nobody’s perfect,” said Marlene Mollett, a Democrat who added that she plans to vote for Robinson. “I think he’s going to make a difference in the world.”
Those are not the only places Robinson has found support: The state’s Republican Party issued a statement defending him last week, and on Saturday, as Trump was campaigning in Wilmington, North Carolina, voters told his colleague Neal Vigdor they had doubts about CNN’s reporting.
“You can’t be held accountable for the rest of your life for every word that comes out of your mouth,” Norman Arsenault, 67, a retired Marine from Jacksonville, North Carolina, said at the event in Wilmington on Saturday.
Jolynn Fish, 58, who lives in Ashe, North Carolina, and works from home, said Saturday she wasn’t sure whether to believe CNN’s report. “I don’t care about people’s personal lives,” she said. “I only care about policy.” She acknowledged that she was worried Robinson would undermine Trump in North Carolina, adding, “I noticed Trump’s not here today.”
She said she still supports Robinson. “I have no choice,” she said. “I like him.”
Nebraska man speaks out
A Nebraska senator who Republicans had hoped would ease former President Donald Trump’s path to the White House by agreeing to change how the state’s electoral votes are apportioned said Monday he would not do so, ending a brief but intense lobbying effort by allies of Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
It all hinged on a Democrat-turned-Republican state legislator from Omaha named Mike McDonnell, who on Monday said he didn’t agree with replacing Nebraska’s 32-year-old tradition of allocating three of its five electoral votes to each congressional district with a winner-take-all system based on the statewide popular vote, and he pushed back against calls by the governor and the state’s congressional delegation to help Trump.
“With 43 days until Election Day, now is not the time to make this change,” McDonnell said.
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