Lieutenant Gov. Mark Robinson, a far right GOP extremist in North Carolina who has a history of making hostile comments toward women, LGBTQ people, and others, has won the Republican Party’s nomination to run for governor in that state.
Robinson, who won the primary with nearly two-thirds of the GOP vote, will face off against Democratic primary winner Josh Stein, the current state attorney general.
North Carolina is largely viewed as a “purple” state. Its current governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat, while the state legislature is run by Republicans. Barack Obama won the presidential election in the state in 2008, but lost in 2012. In both 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump won the state, but in the latter contest, Joe Biden came within just 1.3 percentage points of flipping the election his way.
With voters in the state overall not leaning particularly hard one way or another, Robinson’s candidacy poses a challenge for Republicans, given his extremist, far right views.
Robinson, for example, has expressed support for ending abortion rights for North Carolinians. “We got [abortion] down to 12 weeks” in the state, Robinson said last month. “The next goal is to get it down to six, and then just keep moving from there.” Robinson has also referred to abortion as a “scourge that needs to be run out of this land.”
The GOP candidate for governor is a noted Holocaust denier and has repeatedly expressed antisemitic viewpoints. He’s described the idea of the Holocaust being real as “hogwash,” for example, saying in 2018 that it was “foolishness” to believe that Hitler disarmed Jewish people living in Germany and beyond and “march[ed] them off to concentration camps.” In 2017, he said on Facebook that he was “sick of seeing and hearing people STILL talk about Nazis and Hitler and how evil and manipulative they were.” He also derided the Marvel film “Black Panther” as being “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxist.”
Four years ago, Robinson went on a rant against women’s rights, claiming that the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote didn’t exist and that the U.S. would be better off if those rights weren’t recognized.
“I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote,” Robinson said in March 2020.
Robinson has also mocked school shooting victims who advocate for gun reforms, including those who survived the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. In other social media posts, he’s called such victims “spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN,” “spoiled little bastards,” and “media prosti-tots.”
In 2021, Robinson vehemently attacked LGBTQ people, describing homosexuality and transgender people as “filth” and expressing his deep opposition to marriage equality. Days later, he stood by his comments, even after they were condemned by voices from across the country, including the White House. He has also described the so-called “transgender movement” as being “demonic.”
In October of last year, Robinson gave a half-hearted defense of his past comments, which didn’t appear to include an apology.
“There have been some Facebook posts that were poorly worded on my part, did not convey my real sentiments, and I have addressed those issues and moved on from those issues,” he said to reporters at the time, specifically addressing his antisemitic views in order to appear supportive of Israel after it began its attacks on Gaza.
In response to his primary election win, on Wednesday the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) released an ad highlighting Robinson’s comments from the past.
“This is the Republican Nominee for governor of North Carolina,” text at the start of the advertisement states onscreen.
A small television set then appears, featuring clips of Robinson’s statements. In addition to the aforementioned word, the ad features other commentaries from the controversial nominee.
“It’s not your body anymore. It’s y’all’s body,” Robinson says regarding abortion rights, decrying bodily autonomy as an inherent right.
“I’d love to pass a law that restricts abortion. We could pass a bill saying you can’t have an abortion in North Carolina for any reason,” another part of the ad shows Robinson saying.
“Mark Robinson is dangerous. He’s too extreme to be the next governor of North Carolina,” text at the ad’s conclusion states.
Robinson’s candidacy could be used by Democrats in the state to tie his extremism to other Republicans, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, who endorsed Robinson at a rally last week.
“I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two,” Trump told Robinson at that event.
While Trump’s words were meant to praise Robinson, they were perhaps ironic, given that the GOP gubernatorial nominee has spoken against King’s legacy, deriding him in the past as an “ersatz pastor” and a “communist,” whose movement was “crap.” And as the DGA’s ad also points out, Robinson has errantly claimed that the Civil Rights movement resulted in a loss of freedoms. Robinson has also used the occasion of Martin Luther King Day to deride the holiday, falsely claiming in social media posts on that day in the past that racism doesn’t exist anymore.
In an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday, North Carolina Democratic Party chair Anderson Clayton explained that the party’s current goal is to display Robinson’s extremist views for every voter across the state, to showcase how dangerous a Robinson-run governor’s office would be.
“Our job, in the North Carolina Democratic Party, is to make sure everyone knows who Mark Robinson is,” Clayton said.
Stein, Robinson’s main opposition in the gubernatorial contest set for November, expressed similar sentiments earlier this week.
“What our duty, our obligation as a campaign is to make sure that people have the information they need in order to make the right choice,” he said.
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