Mark Robinson (no, not that one) preps long-shot campaign on a bus named Bessie Murphy

Add this to the ball of confusion that is North Carolina politics: There are now two Mark Robinsons in North Carolina politics, and they may both run for governor next year.

One is Lt. Gov. Mark K. Robinson, the state’s voluble and controversial first-term Republican, who seems to be the frontrunner for his party’s nomination in the 2024 governor’s race.

The other is Mark H. Robinson, a Democrat with a Naval career, a master’s degree in business administration, a small cotton-candy business and a secondhand bus that bears his name — middle initial prominently included.

He, too, has his sights set on 2024, and he’s on a 100-county listening tour.

“I’m going to go for broke,” Mark H. Robinson told WRAL News on Friday. “And I’m going to go for either lieutenant governor or governor.”

He’d be a long-shot candidate in any version of a statewide race. But having the same name as a Republican lieutenant governor — the one who called homosexuality “filth,” acknowledged paying for an abortion before becoming adamantly against it and suggested God calls men, not women, to lead — probably makes things even harder.

“I don’t think you could have a worse name in a Democratic primary,” said Maggie Barlow, a Democratic strategist.

Mark H. Robinson seems undaunted. He grew up in Sampson County, one of 10 children, learning on a farm that you just make things work.

“It just gave me that ability to think that I could do anything, because I had to do everything,” he said with a laugh.

Sampson County features prominently on Mark H. Robinson’s bus. He cut and applied the letters himself and, if there’s a hole in a letter, it’s shaped like Sampson County.

Robinson is registered as a Democrat but describes himself as a moderate and tries to stay away from labels as he travels the state, asking people what North Carolina can do better. He said he’d run as an independent if he could, but he knows that wouldn’t work, and he identifies with the Democratic Party’s values.

Still, party labels “put people in boxes,” he said.

“And, after a while, they begin to believe that they are in that box,” he said.

The 2024 lieutenant governor’s race already features four Democrats, according to a list of candidates maintained by Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer. One of them is Sen. Rachel Hunt, daughter of former Gov. Jim Hunt.

“When I read the name I immediately thought: Wait, what?” Hunt said of Mark H. Robinson. “That’s going to be interesting.”

Those who follow state politics will probably know who’s who in 2024. Mark K. Robinson is popular with Republicans and despised by much of the Democratic Party.

But it could create confusion for those who don’t follow politics closely, including Democrats surprised to see Mark Robinson on their primary ballot. A March High Point University poll said 57% of North Carolina residents were unsure about or unfamiliar with the lieutenant governor. A polling memo this week from well-known Republican consultant Paul Shumaker said 44% of North Carolina voters had never heard of him.

That will change as Mark K. Robinson’s Republican opponents, state Treasurer Dale Folwell and former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker gear up their gubernatorial campaigns, and even more as Democrats take aim at him with a barrage of negative ads. Attorney General Josh Stein, so far the only Democrat running for governor, has spent much of his early campaign blasting the lieutenant governor.

The coming advertising blitz aimed at someone with almost the same name “could be very tricky for this gentleman,” Hunt said. A spokesman for Stein’s campaign declined to comment. A spokesman for the lieutenant governor’s campaign didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

By the way, Mark K. Robinson’s middle name is Keith. Mark H. Robinson’s middle name is Harrison, after a great aunt. He said the name Mark came from a character on “The Rifleman,” the TV western, and that his parents let his two oldest brothers pick it out.

Mark H. Robinson graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and joined the Navy, serving six years active duty and 24 in the reserves, retiring as a captain. He has an MBA from Duke University and worked 15 years at Sikorsky Aircraft in Connecticut.

Little of this is on his website, mark4nc.com. Under “education” it just says, “some.”

“The reason for that is, I don’t want people … to look at me for where I’ve been,” he said.

Now 61, Mark H. Robinson calls himself a “micro businessman.” He owns a cotton candy trailer that travels to events. He said he bought it 13 years ago to teach his now adult children the value of work, and that $32,000 in proceeds have been donated to charity.

He says he did “everything except submit the paperwork to run for lieutenant governor” in 2020, but it wasn’t his time. That was the year Mark K. Robinson, a political novice whose passionate gun rights speech at a Greensboro City Council meeting made him famous, went on to become the state’s first Black lieutenant governor. That Mark Robinson — who has a similar website address, markrobinsonfornc.com — beat eight other candidates in the Republican primary that year.

This time Mark H. Robinson has not yet created a campaign committee or filed paperwork with the State Board of Elections, though state law suggests he should have as soon as he started spending his own money on a run.

“I view myself as a private citizen,” Mark H. Robinson said. “I’m the one putting fuel in Bessie Murphy.”

That’s his bus, named after his maternal grandmother. He wanted to buy a second one and name it after his paternal grandmother, Marie Irene, but that proved to be too much.

So far Bessie Murphy has carried Mark H. Robinson to about 60 counties. Only the western part of North Carolina remains before a final decision on what office to seek and a formal announcement.

And if it doesn’t work out, Mark H. Robinson say he's converting his bus into an R.V.

“And I’m driving out to California with it to see my niece,” he said. “And driving up to Oregon to see my uncle.”