The North Carolina gubernatorial race is lost, a month and half before it is even formally set to take place in November. In a news dump on Thursday by two separate media outlets, Republican lieutenant governor Mark Robinson — running to succeed term-limited incumbent Democrat Roy Cooper — was revealed to the world to have engaged in multiple unseemly behaviors online, particularly during his days as an enthusiastic participant in the comments section of a pornography website.
The most salacious of Robinson’s postings reveal the sorts of private sexual peccadilloes that cannot be discussed with dignity yet are politically fatal. Far more relevant to voter concerns were comments in which Robinson proudly labeled himself a “Black Nazi,” or averred that he would happily own slaves himself if he could, such was his contempt for many of his fellow African Americans.
The deadline to drop out has passed, and Robinson’s Democratic opponent, Josh Stein, had already built a sizable advantage in polling over the lieutenant governor before the scandal broke — Robinson has been a controversial statewide figure for years, before he became the GOP nominee. Now, Stein can measure the drapes for the governor’s mansion. Almost all of Robinson’s campaign staff have quit, and the Republican Governors Association has decided to pull its advertising money from the race in an inevitable act of triage.
Some fret that Mark Robinson is so toxic that he threatens Donald Trump’s hold on a state he requires for any plausible, national electoral-victory scenario in November. It seems unlikely, though. That is not the way national elections typically work. It’s true that Trump is in danger of losing North Carolina, but if he does so it will be on his own demerits, not those of a downballot candidate long since given up for dead.
But it is appropriate to ask why Mark Robinson cruised to the GOP nomination in 2024 when the contents of his opposition file were already an open secret in state politics for years, so much so that he was making terrified excuses for them in private to donors well over a year ago. What was known about him by all at that point — to name but one thing, his long history of making antisemitic comments and curiously ambivalent statements about Nazi Germany — should have been more than disqualifying. The reason why they weren’t is twofold: most obviously, because Donald Trump endorsed him in 2023, and his endorsement both chased other potential candidates from the race and cemented the vote of the rank-and-file.
But there is more to it than just that, for Robinson was likely to win his primary regardless of Trump’s intervention: He is a bomb-thrower skilled at inflaming his right-wing audiences and playing to January 6 truthers and other cranks. The Republican Party, beginning with its voters, needs to recognize that choosing candidates based on their offensiveness and fringy vibes is a formula for futility. Chalk up the North Carolina governorship as another office lost for the GOP by forfeit.