On election night, the guy who took down Mark Robinson

PHOTO: Louis Money, second from right, with the rest of Trailer Park Orchestra in Wilmington over the weekend. Photo courtesy Louis Money

Tuesday night used to be Blues Night at Fishers Grille, a tiny tavern near downtown Greensboro in the Fisher Park neighborhood. But tonight, election night, it plays host to a small crowd of folks sipping beers, munching on pub fare and watching the returns come in. Among them is the man who toppled the political career of North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.

Louis Love Money sits at the bar on this night, eating a plate of hot wings and sipping on PBRs, clad in a T-shirt advertising his band, Trailer Park Orchestra.

He did it all for the band, he says. 

It was the single he wrote, “The Lt. Gov. Owes Me Money,” that brought on his sudden rise to infamy, the calls from reporters, the social media notoriety, the gigs.

In it, he details an interaction between he and Robinson that took place more than a decade ago, in the before, when Robinson worked at a Greensboro Papa John’s pizzeria and Money was pulling shifts at a local porn shop. Robinson, he says, was a regular, buying videos and watching them in the booths at the shop reserved for that purpose. In his recount of the tale for the Assembly, Money said he had a side business selling videos too explicit to be sold in this state under the counter to patrons, patrons that included Robinson. 

“He was good for at least one a week,” Money told the Assembly. And he claims that Robinson never paid him for the last one, incurring a debt of $25 and inspiring the song, which in turn began a public-relations rockslide for Robinson’s campaign for NC governor.

Within a couple weeks, as Republicans either disavowed Robinson or stood staidly by him, CNN dropped a bombshell companion piece, reporting that around the same time, he had been making racist and lewd comments on porn websites, including NudeAfrica.com, using an alias and phrasing that tracked with his documented history. 

The CNN piece and Robinson’s alleged comments did what his caustic personality and his wife’s sketchy nonprofit could not. It hurt his chances in the election.

Suddenly he was disinvited to speak at a Trump rally in Wilmington. Suddenly his poll numbers dropped precipitously, like a boulder pushed off a cliff. Suddenly the aggressive candidate — and current lieutenant governor of the state — was on the defensive as screenshots of his comments, some of which described explicit sexual acts with his wife’s sister and another in which he called himself a “Black Nazi,” made the rounds.

“My story was like, ‘Ha ha ha,’” Money says now at the bar. “That [CNN] story was like, ‘What the fuck?’”

The media blitz has been welcome. The story got picked up by far and near: WRAL, QNotes, the Daily Beast, Esquire, NC Newsline and more than a dozen other local, state and national news organizations. 

“Everything he called me,” Money says, “he got proven to be. A degenerate. A freakshow grifter. [He called the story] Democratic fan fiction, while he’s writing fan-fic about his wife’s sister.

From what I understand, she doesn’t even have a sister.” A phone call to a friend named Leo confirms this: Leo says Robinson’s wife does not have a sister.

The first of the NC returns has come in, showing Robinson’s opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, ahead by 40 points. It’s too early to make anything of it, but it’s a harbinger of how the race will end.

At this, Money’s phone starts blowing up: a text from his 7-year-old son, who wants to Facetime; another from a New York Magazine writer who picked up the story, asking if Louie voted yet.

“I voted early, and I did not masturbate in the voting booth,” Money replies.

“This has been great for me, personally,” Money says now. “We added about 7,000 more YouTube views” for the video of the song, and then there is the notoriety, both for himself and for the band. They were booked at the beach in Wilmington this past weekend at a place called Reggie’s for the Port City Blitz event.

“They hit us up and said, ‘We’d love to get you down,’” Money remembers. “I got my first death threat!”

And he’s also being sued, along with CNN, by Robinson for defamation, first for $50 million and then the damages were reduced to $25 million. Money says that next week his lawyer will make a motion to dismiss the case.

“I’d feel sorry for Mark if he didn’t talk so much shit about me in the press,” Money says. “He didn’t know this was going to happen to him [10 years ago]. Putting his views out there, back then he wouldn’t have cared. But he actually achieved something, and it was too late to go to the middle ground.”

Before 9 p.m., the Associated Press has called the race for Stein, the first NC race to be called; other results would not come in for hours. Someone texts him, “You’ll never get your money now.”

“If he paid me,” Money says, “the song’s not funny. The lieutenant governor paid me for porn, not the lieutenant governor owes me for porn — that’s funny. If he paid me I never could have written it.

“That would have made me the bully.”