John,

Listen: If you are reading this and wondering what a nutty candidate in North Carolina has to do with you, or why you should care, give me one second to explain.

We have written to you about Mark Robinson before — most recently after he delivered an overtly political speech at a church, alongside a pastor who clearly engaged in partisan electioneering activity (which is illegal under federal law, but Republicans have made enforcement impossible). Robinson repeated one of his many bigoted conspiracy theories: that gender identity, especially transgender, is a myth and will result in an unholy smiting by God if we don’t adopt his fundamentalist Christian beliefs into law.

Mark Robinson is what happens when otherwise good and reasonable people fail to grasp the direction of the MAGA movement and the rise of the violent far-Right. That is, creeping American fascism dressed in religious garb, preaching the “freedom for me but not for thee” gospel, and a candidly anti-democratic social order.

This man and the movement he leads are particularly dangerous in North Carolina. This state is on the cusp of flipping blue — it remains a purple state, one in which Joe Biden lost by only 1 percentage point in 2020. And college towns are rapidly trending blue, turning out in record numbers to oppose the MAGA movement.

What comes out of these fights in North Carolina has national implications — from the asinine fringe legal theory that state legislatures have supremacy over federal elections (i.e., that Republicans in state houses can “constitutionally” overturn the results of democratic elections if they so choose) to extreme partisan gerrymandering that leads to a feckless Trump stooge like Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. With radical GOP leaders like Mark Robinson in charge, these experiments in authoritarianism tend to escape the laboratory that is North Carolina and infect other parts of the country.

If Robinson wins, all of the progress we are making opposing a hard rightward lurch in this country becomes null and void. A Robinson administration would enact a robust voter suppression agenda, harmful anti-trans legislation, give away tax dollars for private religious education, implement extreme restrictions on abortion including no exceptions for rape or incest, and gerrymander congressional districts that give the GOP a fierce national edge on control of the U.S. House.

We can't let this happen, not while we have the power and ability to fight back.

Grassroots, people-backed groups like ours are often the only thing standing in the way of dangerous un-American leaders like Mark Robinson and Lauren Boebert. We can’t afford to stand by and watch — we have to get our hands dirty and fight back. Can you join us in this urgent task and help American Muckrakers fight back against fascists like Mark Robinson by making a contribution of $25 or whatever you can do right now?