Super Tuesday confirmed Tuesday, March 5: the next governor of North Carolina will be African-American or Jewish.
This is unprecedented in the history of this southern US state.
The big political rally of Super Tuesday, an essential stage for the nomination of the two main candidates for the American presidential election, also serves to find out who will run for governor in several American states.
And this year, all eyes were on North Carolina.
Not only because of the atypical profile of the candidates for this state still governed by a white Christian until now.
But also because this duel could “be a very good indicator of how Americans will vote for the presidential election in November,” assures the ABC News channel.
An African-American Donald Trump?
Electoral strategists will thus closely follow the progress of the campaign of the very conservative African-American candidate Mark Robinson and his opponent, the Democrat Josh Stein.
On the right, but then really very right, Mark Robinson - currently "lieutenant governor" that is to say the deputy of the Democratic governor Roy Cooper - appears as a sort of derivative product of Donald Trump with black skin and... in more outrageous.
“He is the most 'Maga' of the candidates for a post of governor and probably one of the most extremist,” assures Iwan Morgan, specialist in contemporary political history of the United States at University College London.
Read alsoAfter an unsurprising Super Tuesday, the Biden-Trump return match is now on track
A bit like the former president, Mark Robinson portrays himself as “the outsider” who carries the voice of the common people against the “political establishment”.
It must be said that his opponent, Democrat Josh Stein, a seasoned politician, was designated as his heir apparent by current Governor Roy Cooper and has attended the best universities in the country.
He is also the son of a renowned civil rights lawyer in the American South.
Mark Robinson likes to point out that he comes from a very modest background and that he experienced personal bankruptcy.
But above all, he likes to make inflammatory statements.
Since he emerged from anonymity in 2018 with a fiery speech in favor of the right to bear arms - which made him one of the stars of the very influential NRA, the firearms lobby - he has insulted the LGTB+ community, been accused of defending sexual predators like Harvey Weinstein and mocking survivors of school shootings.
On his Facebook page, he also cited Adolf Hitler to justify that we “could be proud of our race” and violently attacked the film “Black Panther” described as the adventures of a “hero created by a Jew agnostic whose story was adapted for the cinema by satanist Marxists”.
Outings which “make him a very Trumpist character”, recognizes Thomas Gift, director of the Center for Research on North American Politics at University College London.
The ex-president was not mistaken since he gave his support to the candidacy of Mark Robinson, describing him as “Martin Luther King on steroids”.
Ironically, Mark Robinson is not a fan of the famous hero of the cause of African-American rights whom he called a “communist”.
The middle-class white woman's vote
Conservative strategists fear that this sponsorship will prove electorally risky for Donald Trump, explains the AP news agency.
The November vote for the new governor in North Carolina comes at the same time as the presidential vote.
The danger “is that the voters who rejected Mark Robinson will quite naturally also vote against Donald Trump,” underlines Iwan Morgan.
When we vote against white hat, we are not going to vote for white hat.
Until recently, this danger was minimal as North Carolina was a Republican stronghold during the presidential elections.
“Since 1976, this state has only voted once in favor of a Democratic presidential candidate: for Barack Obama in 2008,” underlines Iwan Morgan.
But over time, “the electorate became more and more divided,” notes Thomas Gift.
Blame demographic change: “There has been the boom in what we call the 'research triangle' around the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill with large universities and a more educated and moderate population that has developed,” adds this specialist.
There is also a very large white middle class in the suburbs of the state's big cities and no one really knows who they will vote for.
“Women from this population, which traditionally leans more to the right, could shift due to the conservatives' positions against the right to abortion,” estimates Iwan Morgan.
Mark Robinson, again, did not do half-measures by describing all those who practice abortion as “butchers of humanity” and the women who resort to them as “murderers”.
“Of course the Democrats must have been happy to see that the Republicans did not choose a moderate candidate in North Carolina,” summarizes Mark McLay, a specialist in American politics at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. United.
And that's one of the main reasons why CNN believes that North Carolina represents "Biden's best chance to win a state where he failed to win in 2020."
The score in 2016 (50.5% of the vote against 46.7% for Hillary Clinton) and in 2020 (49.9% against 48.6% for Joe Biden), had already been very close in favor of Donald Trump in this State.
A stronghold to take?
With 16 electorates at stake, North Carolina may be a hot take for Democrats in November.
For now, the Biden camp is “focusing on the most contested states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but if they win in North Carolina, they can afford not to win the one of these great 'swing states' [the States where the balance of power is the tightest, Editor's note]”, estimates Iwan Morgan.
The fact that the outcome of the vote - both for the next governor and for the future president - seems more uncertain than ever in North Carolina also has financial consequences.
“Republicans are not in the habit of spending a lot to secure victory in North Carolina.
This time, they will probably have to invest more, which means less money to campaign elsewhere,” said Thomas Gift.
But he thinks the Republicans remain the favorites in North Carolina, despite the excesses of Mark Robinson.
“Donald Trump is a fairly unique politician who has proven that the setbacks of candidates he supported, particularly during the midterm elections, have not greatly affected his popularity,” underlines Thomas Gift.
North Carolina also represents a “swing state with an inelastic electorate”, underlines Mark McLay.
It is an American political concept which designates states where the balance of electoral power is certainly tight, but with a low number of undecided voters.
That is to say, almost all independents would really have to vote for Joe Biden for Donald Trump to lose North Carolina.
This would then be a real feat.
The Republican Party could then really regret not having done everything to avoid having its candidate for governor be a politician who invokes Adolf Hitler to support his ideas.
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