In politics, like in show business, everything outward facing is deliberate. So when Lt. Gov Mark Robinson chose the Ace Speedway to announce his intention to run for governor of North Carolina on Saturday, he did so to send a message. And it is not a message of progress and unity.

For starters, Ace Speedway is in Alamance County, site of one of the last Confederate monuments still standing in NC. Sometimes the locals stand around it with guns, “protecting” it. Sheriff Terry Johnson of Alamance has troubling connections with white supremacists there — he seemed to know all of the members of Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County, or ACTBAC, which has been named as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, at every protest in 2020 and 2021.

This is fitting for Robinson, who, though he is Black, has said on the subject of reparations that it is Black folks who owe a debt to the United States, and not the other way around. 

In June 2020, Gov. Roy Cooper ordered Ace Speedway to shut down after they tried to hold races during the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic. A few months later, the speedway hosted Alamance County Trump Convoy and Ride 2020, a parade on the racetrack. Afterwards, one of our reporters saw a truck from the convoy shout, “White power!” as they cruised through town.

This also tracks for the man who said, while the nation was in the throes of a deadly pandemic, “The real virus is Democrats!”

Need we remind you that Mark Robinson is trash? The man who rose to prominence by shouting at a Greensboro City Council meeting — his position was that Greensboro should allow gun sales at a city-owned facility — has called members of NC’s LGBTQ+ community ‘filth,” also believes the state should enact a total ban on abortion, has said that women should be subservient to men, as lieutenant governor created a bogus task force to tackle a nonexistent problem of “indoctrination in our schools” and has posted photos of himself holding a massive pistol and drinking from a mug that says “liberal tears.”

He is truly awful, and should be kept away from the levers of power at any cost.

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