North Carolina’s Republican lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, failed in his bid to become governor after a series of scandals plagued his campaign.
Democrat Josh Stein won in a landslide when ABC News called the race Tuesday night, 58% to 38%.
Robinson was unable to recover after the latest scandal revealed that he shared several controversial comments on a porn forum called Naked Africa, including calling himself a “black Nazi” and a “pervert.”
Gov. Roy Cooper, a beloved Democrat in the state, was unable to run for re-election after serving two consecutive terms in office.
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson lost his bid for the governor’s mansion on Tuesday.
Initially, Democrats were worried about losing the seat to a Republican in the red-leaning state.
But when Robinson emerged as the scandal-plagued GOP nominee, those fears were allayed almost immediately.
The nail in the coffin for Robinson was the CNN report that revealed his crude Internet activity.
The CNN report, which first aired on September 19, said Robinson left statements more than a decade ago on the message board in which he, in part, referred to himself as a “black Nazi.” He said he enjoyed transgender porn and said he preferred Hitler. to then-President Barack Obama, and criticized the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a worm.”
The network’s report said it compared account details on the message board to Robinson’s other online accounts by comparing usernames, a known email address and his full name.
CNN reported that the details discussed by the account holder matched Robinson’s age, length of marriage and other biographical information.
The network also said it compared figures of speech that frequently appeared on his public Twitter profile with those that appeared in the account’s discussions on the pornographic website.
Republicans urged the lieutenant governor to end his gubernatorial bid after the allegations surfaced in mid-September, but Robinson denied being the author of the messages and comments and refused to allow the Party to field a different candidate to face Stein before it was too late. .
He also frequently visited a sex shop, according to the allegations.
A former sex shop employee said Robinson brought out free pizza and told jokes in the style of 1980s comedian Andrew ‘Dice’ Clay.
And now, the right-wing state will have a Democrat for at least four more years.
Robinson, who if elected would have been the state’s first black governor, sued CNN over its reporting on his online activity on the porn forum.
Democratic Governor Roy Cooper was unable to run for re-election in North Carolina after serving two consecutive terms.
The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, was announced by Robinson at a news conference in Raleigh with a Virginia attorney.
Robinson called the report a “high-tech lynching” of a candidate “who has been targeted from day one by people who disagree with me politically and want to see me destroyed.”
About a week after CNN’s initial report appeared, most of Robinson’s staff resigned.
On September 23, he only had two campaign spokespersons and one bodyguard left on his team.