“An email address belonging to North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson was registered on Ashley Madison, a website designed for married people seeking affairs,” Politico reports.
“The discovery of Robinson’s personal email address on Ashley Madison comes as Republicans in North Carolina on Thursday braced for more potentially damaging news about the scandal-prone nominee for governor, whose chances of winning the seat appear increasingly grim.”
“According to The Economist’s poll tracker, Kamala Harris’s nationwide lead over Donald Trump has widened to 4.5 percentage points, from 3.8 points on September 10th, the day of their debate.”
“A 0.7-point improvement is small but potentially significant, and gives Ms Harris her biggest lead yet in our tracker.”
“Mark Robinson, the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a ‘black NAZI!’ and expressed support for reinstating slavery,” CNN reports.
“Despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric, Robinson said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, a review of archived messages found in which he also referred to himself as a ‘perv.'”
“CNN is reporting only a small portion of Robinson’s comments on the website given their graphic nature.”
But Robinson insisted he was not suspending his campaign: “We are not getting out of this race. There are people who are counting on us to win this race.”
John Hendrickson: “His midweek stop at a suburban arena some 20 miles west of the Queens hospital where he was born seemed more vibes-based than tactical. Trump told the crowd that he would flip the state from blue to red on the electoral map for the first time in decades, a claim so improbable, even he didn’t seem to believe it. Slightly more likely is that Trump’s presence may affect downballot races and the state’s congressional makeup. Although New York City is reliably blue, pockets of Long Island are Trump country.”
“Indeed, the rally site was packed with his fans, who seemed even more enamored of the former president and his antics than usual. Some also spoke of him as something akin to a living martyr.”
A source familiar with the forthcoming CNN story on North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R) told Bryan Anderson the revelations include him saying things in online chats about liking transgender porn, peeping inside women’s locker rooms while in college and wanting to own slaves.
“Donald Trump was so bad at picking who to fire during his stint hosting The Apprentice that the producers of the show would retroactively edit the show to make him look better,” The Independent reports.
Said one member of the production team to authors of a new book: “Our job then was to reverse-engineer the show and to make him not look like a complete moron.”
Mother Jones: “In August, after Donald Trump praised three Republican appointees to the Georgia State Election Board by name at a rally in Atlanta, the MAGA-aligned majority on the board passed a series of rule changes—requiring counties to undertake a ‘reasonable inquiry’ into the vote totals and review ‘all election-related documentation’ before certifying an election—that Democrats and voting rights groups fear could lead GOP-controlled boards not to sign off on the results if Kamala Harris wins the state…”
“If there’s a lengthy dispute over the vote count, Georgia could miss the December 11 deadline for certifying its Electoral College results. If no candidate receives the 270 votes necessary to win the Electoral College as a result, the presidential election would be thrown to the House of Representatives, where Republicans control a majority of state House delegations, allowing them to swing the election to Trump.”
“When are we going to schedule impeachment or is this just concepts of an impeachment?”
— Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), at a House Oversight Committee hearing.
A campaign adviser tells Business North Carolina that gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson (R) “is expected to go on CNN today to defend himself regarding a pending story the national network is preparing.”
Said adviser Jason Williams: “I spoke to Mark this morning and he was prepared to go on CNN and defend himself against the allegations.”
Williams described the CNN story as a “hit piece,” while adding: “The main ones I remember were that they were alleging he made some extremely racist comments about Martin Luther King, referred to himself as a Black Nazi and used antisemitic language referring to Jews.”
Earlier reports suggested Robinson was being pressured to drop out of the governor’s race.
“The national Republican push to help former President Donald Trump win all five of Nebraska’s Electoral College votes is ramping up again, and this time it might work,” the Nebraska Examiner reports.
“Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen on Wednesday hosted two dozen state senators at the Governor’s Mansion, along with Secretary of State Bob Evnen, the state’s chief election official.”
“North Carolina Republicans are bracing Thursday morning as word spreads about a damning news story looming regarding Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson,” the Carolina Journal reports.
“Sources with direct knowledge have spoken with Carolina Journal on the condition of anonymity and said that Robinson is under pressure from staff and members of the Trump campaign to withdraw from the governor’s race due to the nature of the story, which they say involves activity on adult websites in 2000s.”
“Thursday evening is the state deadline to withdraw from the race. The deadline to remove Robinson’s name from the ballot already has passed.”
Audrey Fahlberg: “The article focuses on unsavory comments Robinson made in several online chatrooms… If what I’m hearing is correct, this story will nuke Robinson’s already dwindling chances of flipping termed-out Democratic governor Roy Cooper’s seat.”
Bryan Anderson: “Robinson cancelled two campaign events on Thursday scheduled for Vance and Warren counties. The move came in anticipation of a forthcoming CNN story.”
“Speaker Mike Johnson told House Republican leadership colleagues that he’s talking to former President Donald Trump about his call to shut down the federal government and what options GOP lawmakers have right now as the funding deadline approaches,” Punchbowl News reports.
“Democrats are hoping to tap into every advantage that they didn’t have last time they had to run against Donald Trump, including that they’re not running in a global pandemic,” NOTUS reports.
“They just aren’t sure exactly how much difference an infinitely more robust ground game will make.”
“Kamala Harris’ campaign and an array of liberal groups have built a massive door-to-door canvassing operation, the kind of comprehensive voter-outreach effort they were unable to do in 2020. They hope it can help the party turn out voters — many of them in cities and dismissive of any political communication other than a face-to-face conversation — who didn’t come out to vote four years ago.”
Donald Trump is running a new ad in Michigan claiming falsely that Kamala Harris wants to ban gas-powered cars and require “electric only.”
“They didn’t correct her once and they corrected me, everything I said practically… and the audience went absolutely crazy.”
— Donald Trump, in an interview with Fox News, about his debate with Kamala Harris which had no audience.
The Guardian: “A false claim circulating on social media that Kamala Harris was involved in an alleged hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011 is the work of a covert Russian disinformation operation, according to new research by Microsoft.”
“Researchers found that the group created a video, paid an actor to appear as the alleged victim, and spread the claim through a fake website for a nonexistent San Francisco news outlet named KBSF-TV. The Russian group responsible, which Microsoft dubs Storm-1516, is described as a Kremlin-aligned troll farm.”
Republican members of Congress from Nebraska called on their state to apportion all of its five electoral votes to the popular vote winner of the presidential election in the state, The Hill reports.
Nebraska currently splits its five electoral votes and allocates three of them by congressional districts. Kamala Harris is leading in some polls in the district the includes Omaha.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.