Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor who has a history of making inflammatory comments and has said he would abolish abortion rights, has won the state’s Republican nomination for governor.
Robinson, North Carolina’s first Black lieutenant governor, will face Democrat Josh Stein, the state attorney general, in what’s expected to be a close and hotly contested race in November. Robinson and Stein are attempting to succeed the current Democratic governor Roy Cooper, who is term limited.
Because Republicans already control North Carolina’s legislature, a Robinson victory would give them a trifecta and unilateral control over policymaking in a critical battleground state.
Issues like the right to abortion would be at stake. Robinson said last month that he would “absolutely” protect life from conception. “We got it down to 12 weeks,” he said. “The next goal is to get it down to six, and then just keep moving from there.”
A former factory worker, Robinson launched his political career when his 2018 speech on gun laws to his hometown council went viral. During that speech, Robinson said he represented average Americans who feel targeted and whose safety feels threatened by attempts to restrict firearm access.
The attention following the speech earned him a spot as a conservative commentator and National Rifle Association board member, and he used his new fame to launch his successful bid for lieutenant governor.
Robinson has a history of controversial statements. He has described Covid-19 as a “globalist” conspiracy to destroy Donald Trump. In 2021, he criticized efforts to teach LGBTQ+ issues in sex education, referring to transgender and homosexual people as “filth”. He has also said people who are gay are equivalent to “what the cows leave behind” as well as “maggots” and “flies”.
He implied at a campaign event last month that transgender women should be arrested if they use women’s restrooms.
He once described the movie Black Panther as “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by [a] satanic marxist”. He then said it “was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets”.
In 2014, he quoted Hitler on Facebook in a statement about racial pride. He defended the post in a speech last July, saying quoting the Nazi leader doesn’t equate to supporting him.
“Because you quoted Hitler, you support Hitler,” he said. “I guess every history book in America supports Hitler now. They all quote him.”
If Stein were to win in November, he would be North Carolina’s first Jewish governor. Robinson would be the state’s first Black governor.
At a rally last weekend endorsing Robinson, Trump praised Robinson’s rhetorical skills and called him “Martin Luther King on steroids”.
The race, just one of two gubernatorial contests in swing states this year, will command national attention, with Democrats likely to paint Robinson as an extremist and Republicans tying Stein to Biden and his unpopularity. While Republicans currently control the state legislature, Democrats have lost only one gubernatorial race in North Carolina since 1992.
