On Politics: A church where Mark Robinson still has defenders
POSTCARD FROM RALEIGH A church where Mark Robinson still has defenders
The latest, with 43 days to go
It was about an hour into the 11 a.m. service on Sunday, and Bishop Patrick Wooden Sr. of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, N.C., was at the pulpit, wearing a suit of deep plum. The music had drawn quiet. The morning announcements had been made. And now, the bishop said, he had something to address. "Everybody's talking about Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson," Wooden said, explaining to the congregation that he'd gotten a call from a local reporter on Friday and that the news media — me — was sitting among them that morning. "I called him Friday," Wooden said, referring to Robinson, "and spoke to him myself." Robinson's history of comments that have been widely criticized as antisemitic and anti-gay made him a deeply polarizing figure in North Carolina long before his bid for governor was upended last week by a CNN report that he had called himself a "Black NAZI" and praised slavery while posting on a pornographic website between 2008 and 2012. Now, some of his allies are abandoning him. Most of his senior campaign staff members have resigned. The Republican Governors Association said that its pro-Robinson ads would expire tomorrow and that no new ones had been placed. And former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Robinson in the spring, calling him "Martin Luther King on steroids," did not mention him once during his rally in the state over the weekend. Four days after the report was published, Robinson has insisted that he won't drop out of the race. And a visit to Upper Room, a deeply conservative Black evangelical church with its own outspoken leader whom Robinson has spent years getting to know, was a window into a place where he still has support. Robinson has spent years visiting conservative congregations like this one, using their churches as a platform for a message that aligns closely with theirs. And on Sunday, Wooden made it clear that he was not willing to abandon the messenger. Wooden said that when they spoke, Robinson had denied making the posts presented in the CNN report, and Wooden said he believed Robinson more than the news media. But Wooden's defense centered less on an assiduous denial of the accusations than on the present-day qualities of the man he had come to know. "I do not know of his life prior to 2020 — I cannot speak on him, I can only speak to him from the time that I've known him," Wooden told the congregation. "All I know, I've known, about him is that he's been an upstanding man, a tremendous leader, and he's been a fighter — he's fighting for our children." The congregation began to applaud. A flame-throwing ally in the public sphereReligious support of Robinson is nowhere near universal. Many faith leaders have denounced him, both before and after the CNN report. My colleagues took a deep look in March at how Robinson's political rise had been fueled by his relentless efforts to appeal to specifically white and Black evangelical Christians. He traveled from church to church, delivering outrageous and quotable speeches that laid out his vision of right-wing politics. The same flame-throwing that worried more traditional Republicans thrilled the leaders of those churches, who now had an ally in the public sphere who didn't care about political blowback. One of those speeches happened here, at Upper Room, in August 2021. With Wooden standing behind him, Robinson denounced the transgender rights movement as "demonic" and turned to abortion. "That baby in your womb ain't no clump of cells," Robinson said, and the congregation clapped and cheered, "and if you kill that child, you're guilty of murder." That speech, as well as another he gave that summer in which he said no one "should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality or any of that filth," fueled calls for Robinson to resign, which he defied. When I requested an interview with Wooden after the service yesterday, a man with a security badge initially requested I stop doing interviews and leave. A few minutes after I got to my car, he found me in the parking lot and told me Wooden had decided to speak with me after all. Wooden has long been an outspoken opponent of abortion and gay rights, both of which he denounced over the course of Sunday's service, and he has previously preached against both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama. Inside his office, he told me he had learned about Robinson the way many people in North Carolina had: from a 2018 viral video, taken at a Greensboro City Council meeting, in which he sharply and memorably denounced gun control. "I saw it online, and I didn't know him," Wooden said. And then one Sunday, Robinson appeared at his church, he said. Wooden invited Robinson to speak after he had been elected lieutenant governor. "It wasn't his idea," Wooden told me. "It was all mine. And I tell you, that was a wonderful night. And to this day, even with everything that's going on, I don't regret it at all." Wooden sees Robinson as a champion of the causes he cares about, and as he talked, he suggested he sees a way forward for Robinson's campaign even if the posts were true. "If he did it, and he owned it and he sought forgiveness for it, the fight that he's engaged in today is still a just cause," said Wooden, who praised Robinson for "trying to save babies, save children, save lives." "I pray that we've heard the worst of it," Wooden added later on. Zealous defendersOutside Wooden's office, everybody I interviewed said they were sticking with Robinson, citing his opposition to abortion and suggesting they were more than willing to overlook the reports about his past online activities. "Anybody that's Black will not be a Nazi," E.J. Alston said. "None of us is perfect," said Marlene Molette, a Democrat who added that she was planning to vote for Robinson. "I think he will bring change in the world." It's not just in spaces like this that Robinson has support. The state's Republican Party issued a statement last week defending him. And on Saturday, as Trump campaigned in Wilmington, N.C.,, voters told my colleague Neil Vigdor that they doubted the CNN report. "You can't be held accountable for every word that comes out of your mouth your entire life," Norman Arsenault, 67, a retired Marine from Jacksonville, N.C., said at the Wilmington event on Saturday. Joline Fish, 58, who lives in Ash, N.C., and works from home, said on Saturday that she wasn't sure whether she believed the CNN report. "I'm just not even thinking about people's personal lives," she said. "I'm just thinking about policy." She acknowledged that she was worried that Robinson would drag Trump down in North Carolina, adding, "I notice he's not here today." She said that she was still supporting Robinson. "We don't have another choice," she said. "I like him."
The man from Nebraska speaksThe Nebraska state senator who Republicans hoped would help ease former President Donald Trump's path to the White House by agreeing to change how the state allocates its Electoral College votes said on Monday that he would not do so, ending a brief but intense lobbying effort from allies of Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It had all come down to a state legislator named Mike McDonnell, a Democrat turned Republican from Omaha. On Monday, he said that he would not agree to replace a 32-year tradition in which three of Nebraska's five electoral votes are awarded by congressional district with a winner-take-all system based on the statewide popular vote, bucking calls from Nebraska's governor and its congressional delegation to help Trump. "Right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change," McDonnell said. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
|
posted by Goatz @ 4:04 PM
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home