OFF THE MARK

GOP Pick for North Carolina Guv Longs for the Days When Dames Couldn’t Vote

Mark Robinson insisted in a 2020 speech that Republicans fought “for real social change” before pesky things like women’s suffrage got in the way.

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina, the far-right firebrand and, as of Tuesday, Republican nominee for state governor, doesn’t just love quoting Hitler and referring to the LGBTQ+ community as “filth”—he also once insisted that America was better when women weren’t able to vote. Robinson made the dodgy declaration during a speech he gave at an event hosted by the Republican Women of Pitt County in March 2020, a clip of which was obtained by HuffPost on Wednesday. The unlisted video, uploaded to YouTube in January, shows Robinson recounting how “an idiotic guy” had recently asked conservative commentator Candace Owens “what America are we going back to to ‘make America great again’—the one where women couldn’t vote or Black people were swinging from trees?” Robinson went on to say that he, personally, “absolutely” wanted to go back prior to women’s suffrage. “Do you know why?” he asked. “Because in those days we had people who fought for real social change. And they were called Republicans. And they are the reason why women can vote today.” He added, incorrectly, that it had similarly been Republicans “out there fighting… to bring Jim Crow to an end.”