Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson delivers GOP's response to Gov. Roy Cooper's State of the State address

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson will deliver the Republican rebuttal to Gov. Roy Cooper's State of the State address -- an unusual move since legislative leaders, not executive office-holders, ordinarily give the response. Democrats can’t be trusted to run the state, Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson said Monday during a speech following Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s annual State of the State speech.

“If the Democrats have their way, they’ll pull us back into an era of government overreach, high taxes, and attacks on our personal freedoms,” Robinson said. “During the pandemic, we saw just how far they would go to control your lives. They shut down your businesses. They kept your children out of school. They told you you couldn’t go to church.” Robinson recorded his speech before Cooper spoke. So although it was branded as the official GOP rebuttal to Cooper, Robinson was unable to rebut any of Cooper’s remarks — which were delivered Monday night at the General Assembly to around 200 leaders from the state’s legislative, executive and judicial branches.
On Monday night, just after Cooper’s speech ended, WRAL News asked Robinson if he’d like to make any further comments on what Cooper actually said. He declined, saying his video would speak for itself.

“Since Republicans were elected to the majority in the General Assembly, they have implemented common-sense economic policies to ensure that you can keep more of your hard-earned money,” he said.

In 2024, Cooper is term-limited and can’t run again. So far the only major candidate from either party to officially declare a campaign for governor is Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat. In a speech Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a national gathering of conservative politicians closely tied to the Donald Trump wing of the GOP, Robinson hinted strongly that he’ll run for governor. He called rumors of his campaign one of the “most poorly kept secrets” in North Carolina politics.

On Monday he continued the hints that he’d like to be the one delivering the State of the State speech in 2025. His speech started with a lengthy autobiography, talking about his own personal hardships and how his mother inspired him — much like a campaign ad might begin — before then turning to praise of what Republicans have done for state government in the past decade.

“The Republican-led General Assembly turned a state that was billions of dollars in debt and struggling financially into an economic powerhouse,” Robinson said. “North Carolina is the number one state in the nation to do business.”

He also praised his own efforts as lieutenant governor to curtail what topics schools can teach: “They should be teaching our students how to think — not what to think — ensuring that personal or political ideologies stay out of the classroom,” Robinson said.

Cooper, in his speech, urged GOP lawmakers to stay focused on efforts to keep the economy booming — and not to get distracted by culture war issues around banning schools from teaching certain topics related to race and LGBTQ issues, which Republican lawmakers have recently proposed in bills that are moving forward at the legislature.
Democrats gave Cooper a standing ovation and Republicans shot him glares as he invoked a controversial 2016 law on transgender rights whose national fallout helped him become governor in the first place.

The state Democratic Party chair, Anderson Clayton, took that same criticism even further in her own remarks after Robinson’s speech aired.

Full story: https://www.wral.com/dems-will-pull-u...

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