North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, withdrew from consideration of Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick, in part because he feared that his extremist Republican lieutenant governor might try to take power — or at least the spotlight. – in your absence.
“Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor, is the most extreme state candidate in the country right now,” Cooper told the politician in an article published Saturday as Harris prepared to name her pick to face Donald Trump and JD Vance. Harris’ decision is expected before a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
“If I was out of state at a campaign event, if I was the vice presidential candidate, he could claim I was acting governor,” Cooper said.
Related: The culture war in North Carolina is unfolding in the gubernatorial race
Robinson is a polarizing figure who has wielded pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-Semitic rhetoric, including quoting Nazi leader Adolf Hitlera choice he defended.
Robinson is the swing state’s first black lieutenant governor, and if he defeats Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee, he would become just the sixth black governor anywhere in the USA.
Invoking the memory of the black civil rights leader, Trump called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids.” Therefore, relations between the governor and lieutenant governor have been, unsurprisingly, strained.
Robinson recently complained that Cooper “had several chances to congratulate me on the achievement of being the first black lieutenant governor, and he never took it.”
North Carolina is among the states with constitutions that state that if the governor is out of state, the lieutenant governor assumes power in an acting capacity. Additionally, unlike the presidential race, the lieutenant governor is elected separately, rather than on the same ticket as governor.
As Cooper said, when the first North Carolina Constitution was adopted in 1776, “there was no way to communicate”, so such measures “made sense”.
The constitution was last revised in 1971, by which time telephones had existed for almost 100 years. But the interim governor’s disposition remained.
Cooper told the politician: “There have been some cases around the country that have said, ‘Look, now with text and phone and email and Zoom and forms of communication, this doesn’t make sense’…and the courts have decided that it doesn’t make sense literally means that .
“However, North Carolina courts have not decided this, and recently Republicans took control of the North Carolina supreme court. They’ve made some extremely partisan decisions here lately, especially regarding voting and redistricting.”
Cooper noted that Robinson has already used the constitutional provision.
“I was on a recruiting trip to Japan,” Cooper said of the events of last October. “He claimed he was acting governor. He did a grand proclamation and press conference while I was away. It was something about supporting the state of Israel. Obviously, it was to make up for all the anti-Semitic comments he made, his Holocaust denial that he has done over the years.
“…Our concern was that in this race for governor he likes attention. He enjoys receiving extremist contributions from across the country. If I was out of state…he could claim he was acting governor.
“The attention he would receive would be ten times greater and would be a distraction from the presidential campaign. What’s more, we don’t know for sure what the Republican supreme court would decide.
“We think we have a good case on the issue,” Cooper said, but “it was more that he was going to use this as a real distraction, drawing attention to himself, taking attention away from the presidential campaign, and that was part of the calculation that I observed in taking the decision” not to be considered by the vice president.
