The ad begins in a sunny kitchen. Wearing a dark blue top and a simple gold necklace, the woman speaks directly to the camera as she pours a cup of coffee and places a Bible on the table in front of her.
“I’m Yolanda Robinson,” she said in a two-minute spot released last week. “Lord know you have heard many things about my husband, Mark.”
It’s relatively rare to hear the voice of North Carolina’s second lady. Last week, she played the familiar role of a political wife defending her husband’s character in the aftermath of a public scandal. The Mark she’s referring to in the ad is Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is campaigning for governor after CNN reported that he posted disturbing comments on a pornographic website more than a decade ago. is in progress. himself as a “black Nazi.” (Mr. Robinson denied the report.)
In a game of political trivia, most participants will find it difficult to remember the name of their state’s second lady. But in North Carolina, the lieutenant governor’s wife is a little more famous.
Robinson, 56, sometimes appears alongside her husband at campaign stops and sometimes plants a kiss on him before speaking at a rally or event. (She has appeared on the campaign trail at least once since the CNN report.) But during Ms. Robinson’s brief political career, she has also been in the spotlight for ventures that have faced legal problems. . One of them, a nonprofit, was shut down this year amid an investigation that sought to repay $132,000 to state agencies.
“The fact that we know her name is unusual,” said Chris Cooper, professor of political science and public affairs and director of the Hare Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University. “It says a lot that she’s been involved in as many controversies as her husband.”
Representatives for Robinson’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Robinson declined to comment.
The couple, both from North Carolina, met through mutual friends shortly after Robinson dropped out of college and started working at Sbarro fast-food pizza restaurant, New York magazine reported. The two married in 1990 and had two children, a son, Dayson, named after Mr. Robinson’s father, and a daughter, Kimberly.
Robinson had been working in furniture manufacturing and other jobs, and the couple was struggling with money. The couple, then in their 30s, filed for bankruptcy three times when they first started dating, in 1998, 1999 and 2003, and were evicted in 2012 for failing to pay rent.
“His attitude wasn’t a question of ‘I can’t pay,’ it was a question of ‘I don’t have to pay,'” former landlord Kermit Robinson said in an interview.
Lieutenant Governor Robinson’s representatives confirmed the eviction, saying in an August 2023 statement to Raleigh news station WRAL that the landlord had failed to go through the legal process to collect the rent owed by the couple. denounced.
Robinson, who earned a master’s degree in accounting from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, sought to ease her family’s financial hardship. She started a daycare, Precious Beginnings, in 2000 and later founded a nonprofit organization that helps foster homes receive federal funding to provide healthy meals.
In his memoir, “We Are The Majority: The Life and Passions of a Patriots,” Mr. Robinson credits his wife’s nonprofit organization, Balanced Nutrition, for giving the couple the financial stability to enter politics. I’m writing. He entered the Republican primary for lieutenant governor the following year after a video of him speaking in support of gun rights at a Greensboro City Council meeting in 2018 went viral.
“There’s a perception out there that she’s the brains of the organization,” said Brant Clifton, editor of the Daily Haymaker, a conservative commentary site focused on North Carolina politics. “He’s the brawn and she’s the brains.”
Early in their relationship, the young couple made a decision they could never have imagined would affect national politics more than 20 years later.
In 2022, a year after Mr. Robinson became lieutenant governor, a social media user posted a comment on Facebook from 10 years ago in which he wrote that Mr. Robinson paid for a couple to have an abortion a year before their wedding. excavated.
“I’m not saying abortion is wrong because God said so. Abortion is wrong because God said so,” he said in the post. “It’s wrong for other people to do that, and it was wrong in 1989 when I paid to do that to my unborn child.”
The revelations roiled North Carolina politics. As an elected official, Robinson maintained a staunchly anti-abortion stance and had a history of making extreme statements about abortion, including calling Planned Parenthood’s practices “genocide.”
A column on the Raleigh News & Observer’s opinion page called Robinson a “moral fraud.”
The second woman appeared at her husband’s side to calm the backlash.
In a video posted to Robinson’s official Facebook page in March 2022, the couple appeared together as the lieutenant governor mentioned abortion. As her husband explained how the couple had made a “wrong” decision, Robinson looked at him but said nothing.
In March, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reviewed her nonprofit, Balanced Nutrition, which is an intermediary between federal funds and child care providers for low-income children. She was once again in the headlines when she started. Food expenses.
Robinson, known professionally as Yolanda Hill, after the agency discovered over the summer that the Office of Balanced Nutrition had improperly billed the state on behalf of child care centers that had not requested or requested it. was ordered to pay more than $132,000 to the state. Meals were sponsored.
In a July letter, the agency said Balanced Nutrition acted improperly by failing to disclose that it was related to Robinson’s daughter and by making payments to her without state approval. He also cited “serious deficiencies” in the nonprofit organization’s management, including its certification.
Ms. Robinson abruptly shut down her nonprofit in the spring, citing the amount of time her husband’s campaign took. Local media reported that the closure occurred shortly after she was notified of the state investigation.
It was a bit of a repeat of the past for the couple. In 2007, before Balanced Nutrition was born, Robinson opened a daycare she owned and her husband helped run after a state audit found the center offered: The center was sold. Forged documents to the inspector.
And before that, in 2003, the Girl Scout Tarheel Triad Council, a group of Girl Scout troops in North Carolina, sued Robinson in small claims court over a bounced check and won.
“Girl Scouts — why do we get in trouble with Girl Scouts?” said Cooper, a professor at Western Carolina University.
Legal issues surrounding “Precious Beginnings” and “balanced nutrition” have been the subject of attack ads by Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, who is running against Robinson in the North Carolina gubernatorial race. A spokesperson for Mr. Robinson’s campaign said in a statement to NC Newsline over the summer that Mr. Stein, who had a significant lead, “made several minor infractions and clerical errors at random in order to undermine his political position.” “I chose,” he accused.
Over the years, there have been few glimpses of Robinson’s thoughts. But her social media accounts offer a limited look into her world.
Much of the content on her Facebook profile is private, but her likes are public. This powerful list includes right-wing media outlets such as Breitbart and the Daily Caller. A group associated with the National Rifle Association. local chapters of the Tea Party and crisis pregnancy centers; (She also loved local dinner theaters, tennis organizations, and Judge Judy.)
On Pinterest, a platform where users “pin” images to their digital mood boards, accounts believed to be associated with Ms. Robinson primarily post cake recipes, interior design ideas, and wedding decor inspiration. Sharing images.
One board labeled “SS man” is currently empty, but an archived version reviewed by the New York Times shows one pin, an image of a German World War II soldier. It had been. The image resembles one posted by a user with the handle “minisoldr” (a username associated with comments Robinson allegedly made on the porn site) on a website that posts photos of military figurines. There is.
On the X account, which appears to belong to Ms. Robinson, she also posted highlights from a class she attended at UNC Greensboro in 2017 called “Marketing for Public and Nonprofit Institutions.” Ms. Robinson specifically posted praise for the nonprofit organization Planned Parenthood’s social media strategy.
Susan C. Beachy and Sheelagh McNeill contributed to the research.
