Though it was hard to believe that Mark Robinson could stoop any lower, the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina found a way.
A CNN report this afternoon said that Robinson described himself as “a Black Nazi” and said in 2012, “I’d take Hitler over any of the sh*t that’s in Washington right now!” Robinson also posted about his enjoyment of transgender pornography, recounted intrusive voyeurism of women showering while a teenager, and criticized Martin Luther King Jr. He wrote that “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few.”
The comments were posted on the message board of a pornography site called Nude Africa. Robinson denies having made them and says he will not leave the race.
One sign of just how troubled Robinson’s run for governor already is was the queasy anticipation that coursed through North Carolina and national political circles much of the day in anticipation of the scoop. The Carolina Journal, a conservative publication, reported earlier in the day that CNN was preparing a damaging story and that pressure was mounting on Robinson to drop out.
The same question kept coming up as I tried to figure out what the CNN story might be: How much worse could it possibly be than what’s already known? The answer is worse, but not categorically worse. Robinson has for a long time made shockingly racist and anti-semitic comments. He has even previously made other disparaging remarks about King, calling him an “ersatz pastor.” If the North Carolina GOP was going to draw a line on this sort of behavior, it should have been drawn years ago.
Now, according to the Carolina Journal, some North Carolina Republicans have been pushing Robinson privately to withdraw. This is not because they are shocked by the new information, but because they can read the polls. Robinson trails state Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee, by substantial margins. His reputation is so bad that the GOP is concerned he could be a drag on both Donald Trump, for whom North Carolina is an important state, and Republicans down the ballot. Today is the final day by which Robinson could withdraw. Even if he did, his name would still be on absentee ballots, which have already been printed.
Robinson said the story was a “high-tech lynching,” and insisted that the posts don’t sound like him. One problem is they sound extremely similar to what he’s said elsewhere. Robinson said in June that “Some folks need killing!” He previously denied the Holocaust and called the comic-book hero Black Panther a ploy by Jews “to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.” He called Michelle Obama a man and Beyonce’s music satanic.
Robinson has a long trail of offensive Facebook comments, and throughout the campaign, reporters have turned up more damaging information. I reported last month that despite making veterans’ issues a center of his campaign, Robinson has skipped every meeting of the state Military Affairs Commission, one of his few statutory duties as lieutenant governor. His wife’s daycare nonprofit has been subject to both state and federal investigations over its use of funds.
Nor does it stretch credulity that Robinson would have been hanging out on a porn site. Earlier this month, the North Carolina publication The Assembly reported on Robinson’s frequent patronage of porn shops in the 1990s and 2000s. Robinson denied having visited the stores, but employees and fellow customers attested to his frequent presence, and the owner of one provided a photo of himself with Robinson.
Perhaps the most embarrassing for the Robinson campaign is how these old comments cut against his campaign message of highly religious social conservatism. That too, has already happened in other instances during this campaign. Robinson is a hardliner on abortion and said he wants to outlaw it completely, although his wife obtained an abortion early in their marriage. In recently revealed 2022 comments, he said the way to empower women was to “get this under control,” waving his hands over his groin. He has tried to moderate his abortion position on the trail, but privately continues to back a full ban.
Another staple of the campaign has been attacks on transgender people, who he has warned “If you’re a man on Friday night, and all the sudden Saturday, you feel like a woman, and you want to go in the women’s bathroom in the mall, you will be arrested, or whatever we gotta do to you.”
On Nude Africa, however, Robinson took a different view. Not only did he boast about illegally peeping on women in restrooms, he wrote about consuming transgender porn. “I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson wrote. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”
Politico also reported today that Robinson’s email address was used on Ashley Madison, a site for people to connect for extramarital sex.
The hypocrisy—like the bigotry—is staggering, but it’s hardly new. Republicans now appear to be stuck with Robinson in the gubernatorial race. They can’t say they weren’t warned.