MONROE — Monroe Mayor Robert Burns looked at Gavin Newsom’s stop in his town and called the crowd a bust.
Burns wrote on X Monday that North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton showed up with the California governor “in my town and county of approximately 250,000 and this is all they could get?” He put the room at about 180 people, which he said was an AI estimate, and added: “Yikes.”
The post is here: https://x.com/robertburns82/status/2096981757555794256
Clayton was listed with Newsom at a Union County Democratic Party rally Saturday, Sept. 5, at the Union County Agricultural and Event Complex in Monroe. That stop was part of Newsom’s “Take It Back” tour through Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina. WBTV reported he also knocked on doors in Charlotte for U.S. Senate candidate Roy Cooper before the Monroe rally.
Burns treated the size of the room as the story. “When JD Vance came to town we had almost 500 people all outside in the sweltering heat,” he wrote. That Vance figure is his comparison. It is not a count from the Saturday rally.
Then he went after Newsom’s state. “Problem is Gavin has failed his own people. The once beautiful city of San Francisco is now a dumpster fire. And so many others in CA are just like it or worse.” He told readers to ask Spencer Pratt, and tagged him. The close was a warning, and a list: “People see what he’s done and we don’t want him or anyone else like him, Cooper, or Stein to California our North Carolina. North Carolina deserves WAY better.”
Cooper is the Democrat running for the U.S. Senate seat Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is leaving. Stein is the Democratic governor. Catawba First News reported Monday on Cooper’s own post about a Supreme Court stay he said gives Republicans a money edge in this midterm: Roy Cooper expresses fear over GOP advantage.
Burns is not a bystander to the 2028 governor’s race. The Monroe mayor, a Republican elected in 2023 after a tie decided by coin toss, has said he will run against Stein. He told Republicans in Rutherford County on June 18 that he will seek the nomination. He filed a candidate committee in March listing the office as governor and the election year as 2028. Ballot filing for that race has not opened. His term as mayor ends in December. He is not seeking re-election.
He was in Catawba County on Aug. 28, speaking at the Catawba Valley Republican Men’s Club Date Night. That stop put a statewide hopeful in front of a local Republican room eleven days before he lit into Newsom for drawing a thin one in Union County.
Republicans had already used the visit. A spokesperson for Michael Whatley, the Republican running against Cooper, said Saturday that “Radical Roy Cooper and his best friend Gavin Newsom are rallying to bring California’s ‘progressive’ agenda to North Carolina,” and that North Carolina wants nothing to do with it.
