Harris makes scandal-plagued Republican the star of her campaign to win North Carolina

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There’s an unlikely star in Kamala Harris ' push to win North Carolina: Mark Robinson. Billboard trucks circulate in key cities warning that Robinson, also the state’s lieutenant governor, is “unhinged.” And Harris is running a new television advertising campaign highlighting Donald Trump’s history of lavishing Robinson with flowery praise. Democrats aren’t making it so easy for Trump to distance himself from the man he endorsed, granted a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention and described as “one of the great leaders in our country” and “better than Martin Luther King.” Virtually every message that Harris’ campaign delivered to North Carolina voters this week featured Robinson, who has been abandoned by many Republican officials — and his own staff — in the wake of a CNN report that detailed explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website. Some of them are pretty gross, to put it mildly.” Republicans are concerned about the scandal’s fallout Veteran North Carolina Republican operative Dallas Woodhouse said Robinson’s potential impact on the election “is concerning,” although he predicted it would have a more serious chilling effect on down-ballot candidates for Congress and the state house, where the GOP is fighting to preserve a supermajority in both chambers. “There’s a greater public recognition that he’s so far outside the mainstream, as is Donald Trump, that I think voters now have an opportunity to connect those dots in a way that could stick at a time when voters are starting to pay attention and make decisions.” He called North Carolina “an absolute dead-heat tossup.” Robinson’s troubles don’t dampen GOP enthusiasm for Trump There were signs of concern about Robinson inside Charlotte’s Freedom House Church during one of Vance’s appearances this week, although no one said that the gubernatorial candidate’s troubles would dissuade them from voting for Trump.