Just when you thought there couldn’t be any more drama or intrigue …
Mark Robinson and his beleaguered gubernatorial campaign have been hit with a legal complaint from a reported creditor seeking a restraining order and a preliminary injunction. (Robinson, through a spokesman, has denied owing the reported creditor.)
The plaintiff seeking the action is a Wyoming-based group called Vox Insights. Vox alleges that Robinson’s former campaign manager entered into a contract for services with them valued at $114,000. The Wyoming firm appears to be concerned that Robinson’s campaign will not be in shape to pay the debt after the election. So, they want some help from a NC court. Here are some details:
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Now that we have that information, let’s look at a timetable:
- According to our research, Vox Insights incorporated in Wyoming on August 20, 2024.
- According to this legal complaint, Robinson’s then-campaign manager signed a contract on September 13 with Vox reportedly worth $114,000.
- On September 18, Vox reportedly sent the Robinson campaign an invoice for $114,000 payable in 30 days.
- The CNN porn story hit around September 18.
- News of the mass-exodus of Robinson campaign staff broke around September 22.
So, that’s a nine-day period between the signing of the contract and the mass-quitting of the campaign team. (Five days between the signing of the contract and the issuance of the invoice.) Was that enough time to complete $114,000 worth of work?
The complaint was filed on October 28 in a North Carolina court. That was 45 days after the signing of the contract, and 40 days after the issuance of the invoice. Was that long enough to complete $114,000 worth of polling work?
Another question is hanging out there. John Locke has also worked with a pollster calling itself Cygnal. (The complaint says Vox / its parent company do business as “Cygnal.”) You would think Locke and Robinson would be seeking the same answers in their polling. Locke makes all their polls and supporting data available publicly. So, WHY shell out $114,000 when you could have gleaned a lot of useful info from Cygnal’s work with Locke?
We talked with a number of experienced state-level campaigners who tell us individual polls can typically run in the $10K to $20K range apiece. How much polling could have been done between the September 13 contract signing and the September 18th issuance of an invoice?
Another tidbit to toss out there: Robinson’s predecessor as lieutenant governor – Dan Forest – is an employee of the law firm bringing the complaint. Heather Whillier — the Robinson campaign’s former finance director – was one of the staffers who left on September 22. She was well-known for her work as a senior adviser / staffer on Forest’s statewide political campaigns. (Whillier would certainly have some inside knowledge about the financial state of the Robinson campaign.)
Given Mark & Yolanda’s history regarding finances and bill-paying, some may see this as little more than par-for-the-course. But it does seem that there might just be more to this story that we just haven’t heard yet.
From my experience with pollsters, Brant, I think your instincts are correct. I, too, smell a rat here. In several legislative races I have worked on, we have either commisioned a poll or received one as an in-kind contribution. That included very extensive baseline polling. In five years advising pro-western political parties in Moldova, I did extensive polling using the Gallup Organization, and those polls were done with face to face interviews, which are much more labor intensive than the telephone and internet techniques used in almost all polls here. Our polls in Moldova also involved multiple open ended questions, which are also more labor intensive to poll. Based upon my experience with all of that polling, there is IMHO a very bad stench from this polling firms claims.