North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has made inflammatory remarks and said he would abolish abortion rights, has won the Republican nomination for governor of the state.
Robinson, North Carolina’s first black lieutenant governor, will face Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein in a close race in November. Robinson and Stein are trying to succeed Democratic incumbent Gov. Roy Cooper, who is term-limited.
With Republicans already in control of North Carolina’s Legislature, Robinson’s victory would give them three consecutive victories and unilateral control over policymaking in the key battleground state.
Issues such as abortion rights will be at risk. Robinson said last month 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 move on.”
Robinson is a former factory worker who launched his political career in 2018 after a speech he gave to his hometown council about gun laws went viral. In that speech, Robinson said he represented ordinary Americans who feel they are being targeted and their safety is threatened by attempts to limit gun access.
The attention that followed the speech earned him status as a conservative commentator and National Rifle Association board member, and he parlayed his newfound fame into a successful campaign for lieutenant governor.
Robinson has made controversial comments. He described Covid-19 as a “globalist” conspiracy aimed at destroying Donald Trump. In 2021, he criticized efforts to teach LGBTQ+ issues in sex education, calling trans and gay people “filth.” He also said that homosexuals are equivalent to “cow scraps” as well as “maggots” and “flies”.
He suggested 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 [a] Satanic Marxist”. He then said that it was “created just to take the shekels out of Schwarz’s pocket”.
In 2014, he quoted Hitler in a Facebook statement about racial pride. He defended his remarks in a speech last July and said citing the Nazi leader did not amount to endorsing him.
“Because you quote Hitler, you support Hitler,” he said. “I think every history book in America right now supports Hitler. They quote him.”
If Stein wins in November, he will become North Carolina’s first Jewish governor. Robinson would become the state’s first black governor.
At a rally in support of Robinson last weekend, 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 draw national attention, with Democrats likely to paint Robinson as an extremist and Republicans associating Stein with Biden and his unpopularity . While Republicans currently control the state Legislature, Democrats have lost only one gubernatorial race in North Carolina since 1992.
