Summary:
- Mark Robinson’s liabilities are growing rapidly in the race for Governor
- Josh Stein is leading both in the polls and the campaign narrative
- The Robinsons’ problems will not end in November
North Carolina’s Republican Lt. Governor Mark Robinson is about to enter a very unpleasant fall election season.
With only 3 months to go before Election Day, Mark Robinson’s much-heralded campaign for Governor of North Carolina has been rocked by one scandal after another: first, there was Robinson’s long history of anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, and examples of coarse, cruel, bigoted and generally weird behavior that are too numerous to count. Next were the jaw-dropping revelations of NC DHHS inspections of the Robinsons’ short-lived childcare center in Greensboro, which have inspired a campaign ad from his Democratic opponent, Josh Stein. And finally, there is the quickly unraveling matter of large-scale financial fraud Mark and Yolanda Robinson engaged in through their “Balanced Nutrition” scheme.
Each of these scandals is particularly bad for Robinson because they are based on public information, and each are very well-documented, making credible denials infeasible. (One can hardly believe the NC DHHS was “politically motivated” in targeting the Robinsons in 2005 and 2007, after all.) The Balanced Nutrition matter even involves documented fraud with taxpayer funds, and is very likely to grow in scope.
With roughly 90 days left until Election Day, Mark Robinson seems to have hit the “MAGA ceiling” of support. By contrast, Josh Stein’s trajectory continues to grow. The May 2024 edition of the Carolina Forward Poll showed Stein gaining 6 points since last fall, eclipsing Robinson for the first time:
It will be interesting to see whether this trajectory has continued in the August 2024 edition of the Poll, due out later this month.
The same brand of unapologetic chauvinism and bigotry that helped Robinson cruise to victory in his Republican primary has served as an obstacle to pivoting in the general election, as he is now attempting to do. As he struggles in the polls, Lt. Governor Robinson now enters an even more difficult last sprint to the November election. Not only does Robinson face tough odds in the Governor's race, and a large bill for funds he and his wife have been ordered to repay to the taxpayers, but a criminal investigation by federal authorities may very well await him when campaign season is over. Unlike the Robinsons' other problems, the Balanced Nutrition matter is only beginning.
The Robinsons' Balanced Nutrition debacle
Mark and Yolanda Robinson have operated Balanced Nutrition since 2015. Balanced Nutrition occupied a middleman niche in the North Carolina state-level administration of the USDA's Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). CACFP is a federally funded program designed to provide low-cost food to lower-income children and some adults. Balanced Nutrition contracted with eligible childcare centers to claim funds from CACFP (via the NCDHHS, which manages the program in NC) on their behalf, and then distributed those funds to its client childcare centers, keeping a percentage for overhead that was subject to strict rules.
Yet a DHHS audit of Balanced Nutrition revealed hard evidence that Mark and Yolanda Robinson thoroughly abused the program, committing major financial fraud over the course of many years - all at the expense of the taxpayers. They did this by improperly billing the federal government in numerous ways: for meals that never actually existed, for clients they never actually had, and for ballooning "administrative costs" that were never explained or approved. In one case, Yolanda Robinson doubled her own salary; in another, the Robinsons added family members to the company payroll without authorization. The Robinsons have now been ordered to repay $132,000 that they collected.
Ominously, back in April, when the DHHS first announced its audit of Balanced Nutrition, the Robinsons' first reaction was to immediately shut down the business. Since then, according to the DHHS, the Robinsons have stonewalled the agency, refusing to meet or discuss the matter.
But there's another major wrinkle: the limited scope of the DHHS audit indicates that the magnitude of the Robinsons' fraud has yet to be fully discovered.
To conduct their audit, the DHHS only reviewed a random sample of 10 Balanced Nutrition clients over a period of the first 3 months of 2024. It was just from that limited scope that the agency uncovered over $130,000 of unallowable costs.
Yet not only did Balanced Nutrition have over 100 clients when it folded in April, but it has been operating since 2015. Thus, the DHHS audit covered barely 3% of the company's time in operation.
This suggests an obvious question: what would the agency find if (or when) it audits Balanced Nutrition's full books?
Dan Forest, Take Two?
North Carolina has not encountered a (proven and prosecuted) financial fraud scandal by an elected official on the likely scale of the Robinsons since Wake County's former Register of Deeds, Laura Riddick, in 2018. Of course, many North Carolina politicians have found ways to become rich with public office - as the joke goes down in Kings Mountain, "[Republican House Speaker] Tim Moore went to Raleigh driving a Honda, and came back driving a Maserati." Corruption in North Carolina's state government has increased significantly in the last decade, with woefully weak opposition.
Mark Robinson is now staring down a fall campaign season that, to be sure, he could very well still win. Like all statewide elections in North Carolina, this Governor's race will be close. But unless Robinson is able to make a rapid and convincing pivot back to the mainstream - in the final days of a Presidential cycle infected with standard fare MAGA weirdness, no less - he may be on track to repeat Dan Forest's lame performance from 2020.
And win or lose, the Robinsons' Balanced Nutrition problems are not about to magically disappear.
A postscript: are the Robinsons finished hustling, after all? Just last year, Yolanda Robinson incorporated a new business with the puzzling name "JK Slime." One has to wonder.
