With $44 million in receipts, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein raised more than ten times more campaign cash in the third quarter of 2024 in the race for Governor than his opponent, Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.
Campaign finance reports for the third quarter, which cover financial activity from July 1 to Oct. 19, show a huge gap between the two campaign’s cash intake. Josh Stein for North Carolina started the reporting period with just under $16 million on hand and brought in $44.6 million in that roughly three month span.
Robinson began July with $6.5 million in his war chest and reported a little more than $4 million in receipts. Of that, $2.9 million was from contributions from individuals. Another $710,164 came from political party committees and $61,712 from outside political action committees (PAC).
Republicans are turning out in record numbers for in-person early voting, historically dominated by Democrats. But Republicans are not opening their wallets for Robinson. As of Thursday morning, 3.6 million North Carolinians had cast ballots, both in-person and absentee by mail. Of those, 1.23 million were registered Republicans, compared to 1.18 million Democrats. Another 1.18 million unaffiliated voters have also cast ballots, according to the State Board of Elections’ daily turnout reports.
Stein raised $10.1 million from individuals and $33 million from Democratic Party committees. Another $186,427 came from PACs. Stein’s campaign is operating within its means, having spent $43.3 million.
Mark Robinson’s campaign spent nearly $10 million, more than twice what it brought in during the third quarter. Still, it reported $680,641 in cash on hand at the end of the reporting period.
Stein had more than $1.2 million on hand when his report was filed, though his total expenditures including in-kind contributions were $59 million for the period.
With less than a week until the election, Stein is polling double digits ahead of Robinson in the Governor’s race, as he has for months. Stein also has consistently out-raised Robinson, whose campaign has been hampered by scandal.
A now-infamous CNN report in September exposed Robinson’s racist, lewd, antisemitic and pro-Nazi comments on a pornographic website’s message board. After the story broke, most of his campaign staff quit, as did several employees in the Lieutenant Governor’s Office.
Despite fulsome praise for Donald Trump and basing his campaign style on the former President’s, Robinson’s outlandish, combative statements on the trail have weighed on his campaign while Trump so far remains largely impervious. Democrats have pushed Robinson’s ties to Trump, who consistently runs tied or nearly so with Vice President Kamala Harris in the race for North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes.
The Republican Governors Association (RGA), which sponsored several rounds of video and print ads targeting Stein, curtailed its ad buying advertising in the state after the CNN story broke. Most state Republicans distanced themselves from Robinson without explicitly calling for him to hit the brakes on his race for Governor.
National Republicans, including both North Carolina Senators Ted Budd and Thom Tillis called for Robinson to prove the comments were not his, but said little else. Trump, who enthusiastically endorsed Robinson after he sealed the Republican nomination for Governor, also shunned the Lieutenant Governor in campaign stops following the porn site scandal.
