Over the weekend, several staffers for North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign for governor resigned from their positions following reports late last week on disturbing posts he’s made online.
The CNN KFile report on Thursday showcased comments from Robinson in forums on an adult website around the early 2010s. Although Robinson denies making the posts, the report provides extensive evidence that he was behind them. (The account in question has a username he frequently uses and utilizes an email address known to be associated with him, and the user — whose posts are more than a decade old and cannot be manipulated now — describes details about his life that correspond with Robinson’s, who wasn’t a public figure at the time.)
In the posts, Robinson expressed a desire to re-establish the institution of slavery so that he could enslave people, described himself as a “Black Nazi,” and praised Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Robinson used derogatory language on the site and referred to Civil Rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. in racist terms. He also gleefully recounted spying on women in locker rooms without their consent or knowledge.
As a result of the report, several of Robinson’s campaign staff quit their roles, including his campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, finance director, deputy finance director, two political directors, director of operations, and a senior adviser.
Among the staffers who quit was Robinson’s senior adviser Conrad Pogorzelski III, who had helped him win the lieutenant governorship in 2020 and had served as his chief of staff before joining his campaign team.
In a press release, Robinson thanked his former staff, recognizing they “made the difficult choice to step away from the campaign.”
Robinson has made similarly extremist statements in public throughout his career — he has, for example, suggested that women should not be allowed to vote, denied that the Holocaust ever happened, attacked victims of mass shootings, and expressed a desire to pass laws restricting reproductive rights, including the right to an abortion.
The fallout from the current controversy has the potential to spill into the presidential race, as North Carolina is a swing state where the contest between GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is incredibly tight.
As a result, Trump — who once lavished Robinson with praise even though his bigoted public statements were well documented — chose not to mention him even once during a political rally in the state this past weekend.
Trump is likely trying to minimize his connection to Robinson in light of the recent reports — but if that’s the case, his running mate J.D. Vance appears to have missed the memo.
While speaking to reporters in Philadelphia about the situation, Vance appeared to defend Robinson, even suggesting that he didn’t believe CNN’s reporting was accurate despite an abundance of evidence showing otherwise.
“The allegations are pretty far out there, of course, but I know that allegations aren’t necessarily reality,” said Vance, who has spent the better part of this month peddling racist lies about Haitian residents of an Ohio town despite knowing they’re false.
Vance’s comments create a deeper tie between Trump’s presidential campaign and Robinson, which could affect how voters will cast their ballots in North Carolina in November. Recent polling data indicates that even a small shift in voter sentiments could affect the outcome.
According to a New York Times/Siena College poll published on Monday, Robinson is behind his Democratic opponent, State Attorney General Josh Stein, with Robinson attaining 37 percent support among likely voters to Stein’s 47 percent support.
Trump is slightly ahead of Harris in the presidential race, receiving 49 percent support while she currently has 47 percent. The two-point margin between the two candidates is within the poll’s margin of error, indicating that the race is a statistical tie.
Other polling in North Carolina shows an even tighter race — according to an aggregate of polling data compiled by FiveThirtyEight, Trump is leading Harris on average by less than one point, again indicating that the race is a tie, just six weeks from Election Day. The state awards 16 Electoral College votes to whoever wins the most votes.
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