Mark Robinson: 'I Absolutely Want To Go Back To The America Where Women Couldn’t Vote'

On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson won the GOP primary to become his party’s nominee for North Carolina governor, presumably with the help of female voters.

But just four years ago, Robinson said he’d “absolutely” like to return to the days when the 19th Amendment didn’t exist ― when women didn’t have the right to vote.

“I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote,” Robinson said in a newly resurfaced video of his remarks at a March 2020 event hosted by the Republican Women of Pitt County.

During this event, Robinson, who was running for lieutenant governor at the time, recalled someone recently asking conservative activist Candace Owens to pick which version of America would make America “great again,” one where “Black people were swinging from cheap trees” or one where women weren’t allowed to vote.

Robinson said he would definitely return to the days in America when women were denied the right to vote “because in those days we had people who fought for real social change, and they were called Republicans.”

This room full of women was quiet as he spoke, though a faint “That’s right” could be heard when Robinson later said Republicans ended Jim Crow laws. (In fact, lawmakers in both parties in Congress and President Lyndon Johnson ended Jim Crow laws by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.)

You catch watch the full clip of Robinson’s remarks here:

Requests for comment from Robinson’s campaign and from his government office were not returned.

The North Carolina Republican’s longing for the days when women couldn’t vote ties into his history of demeaning women and mocking feminism, especially on social media. He’s claimed that feminism was created by