In every presidential election year, we speculate about the chances of an “October surprise.” Last week, with a good chunk of September left, there were two developments that in any other election year would have been considered not just surprising but shocking.
Like the sudden appearance of a late summer squall, rumors began to percolate last Thursday morning about a story concerning North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson that was so bad it would likely force him out of the governor’s race. This just so happened to be the last day his name could be replaced on the ballot with that of another Republican candidate.
By the end of the day, CNN had released its story linking Robinson to some terrible things he allegedly said a decade ago on a porn site. Robinson, claiming that, like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, he was being subjected to “a high-tech lynching,” refused to drop out of the race.
A sex scandal in a state election might not usually rise to the level of a presidential election shocker, but there are some strange aspects to this story, and we’re not talking about the weird sex.
In recent polls, Robinson has trailed Attorney General Josh Stein, his Democratic opponent, by double digits. There is reason to suspect Robinson has also been a drag on Donald Trump, who has praised Robinson as “Martin Luther King on Steroids.”
Normally, suspicious eyes would turn to the Democrats as the likeliest to leak a story like this. But the story first began showing up on conservative sites, and in any case, the Democrats would have had no reason to leak the story while there was still time to replace him. This looks like a botched attempt to pressure an already severely wounded liability to the national campaign to withdraw.
Trump didn’t withdraw his endorsement of Robinson after the beleaguered candidate angrily refused to play along, but he held a rally in Wilmington Saturday without Robinson in attendance and didn’t include him in a long list of North Carolina Republicans in his speech. In the latest New York Times – Siena College poll, Trump holds a narrow 49-47 point lead over Kamala Harris in North Carolina.
The next day, the Georgia State Election Board, ignoring the pleas of local election officials and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in addition to a warning in writing from the state attorney general’s office, passed the rule that requires the hand counting of paper ballots on election night, the latest in a series of measures passed on the votes of the board’s three members who have expressed doubts about the trice-recounted results of the last election.
These two stories may not seem related, but they are. The clumsy attempt be rid of a drag on the campaign in North Carolina and the rule change in Georgia which experts have warned could lead to election night chaos are both examples of how national politics has seeped far down into what used to be the business of the states.
When the board met again Monday after a wave of national reaction to the vote, board member Janice Johnston read an adjective-filled statement in which she decried the “irrational and widespread panic” by both Democrats and Republicans over the board’s action. She also professed outrage at the suggestion that she was part of a coordinated effort to affect the election.
“I really don’t appreciate it,” said Johnston, who recently attended a Trump rally where the former president praised her, and the two members who voted with her as “pit bulls,” and the crowd cheered her. “When I walk in this room, I am single-mindedly focused on my duty as a member of the State Election Board. I have no agenda, no plan, no plot and I find it rather disconcerting to be accused of such things.”
A court challenge to the rules previously made by the board is already scheduled for October, and the latest action by the board is sure to broaden the case. It’s important to note that the rule change requires that each ballot — literally every sheet of paper — and not each vote is counted by hand. Even so, it will be an unappreciated army of exhausted poll workers who will be doing the counting.
