Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign staff resigned after criticism following reports and online posts

More repercussions from a media report investigation detailing evidence that Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina posted alarming statements on a pornographic website’s message board over ten years ago have resulted in the resignation of many senior staff members from his campaign for governor.

Amid criticism, Mark Robinson’s campaign crew resigns

Conrad Pogorzelski III, senior advisor, Chris Rodriguez, finance director, and deputy campaign manager “have stepped down from their roles with the campaign,” the campaign said in a press release on Sunday. The statement said that details on new campaign team members will be released shortly.

In the announcement, Robinson expressed gratitude for the team members who took the tough decision to leave the campaign and wished them well in their future pursuits.

Robinson’s chief of staff, Pogorzelski, who assisted Robinson in winning lieutenant governor in 2020 during his first run for office, also announced on Sunday that three more campaign employees had departed: the director of operations, two political directors, and the deputy finance director.

In a text, Pogorzelski said that he “left of our own accord, along with others from the campaign.”

The CNN report on Thursday uncovered previous comments made by Robinson, describing himself as a “black NAZI” on the message boards of a porn website. He also claimed to have enjoyed transgender pornography, to have preferred Hitler to then-President Barack Obama in 2012, and to have called the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “worse than a maggot.”

Robinson stated on Thursday that he wouldn’t be eliminated from the contest due to “salacious tabloid lies” and denied creating the posts. While attending a governor campaign event on Saturday night at a Fayetteville racetrack, he refrained from addressing the topic directly. This incident occurred after former President Donald Trump, speaking at a rally in Wilmington, some 90 miles (145 kilometers) away, had earlier in the day neglected to name Robinson.

Robinson has often attended Trump’s North Carolina campaign appearances prior to this past Saturday. Robinson, who if elected would become the first Black governor of North Carolina, has long been hailed by the Republican presidential contender, who has called him “Martin Luther King on steroids” for his oratory prowess.

Although Robinson seems upbeat, Stein deems him unsuitable

Even on Sunday, Robinson continued to voice hope that he would defeat Democratic contender and current Attorney General Josh Stein in November. According to polls, Robinson is behind Stein.

Nonetheless, Robinson said that surveys have “underestimated Republican support in North Carolina for several cycles” and that “I am confident our campaign remains in a strong position to make our case to the voters and win on November 5,” given the significant percentage of the population that is still undecided.

Robinson has a lengthy history of saying offensive things, such as implying that women who wanted abortions “weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down” and drawing parallels between slavery and abortion.

Robinson is “utterly unqualified, unfit to be the governor of North Carolina, and we’re going to do everything in our power to keep that from happening,” Stein said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

According to polls, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are tied for first place both nationally and in North Carolina. Democrats have taken advantage of the chance to draw attention to Trump’s relationship with Robinson. They have done so by putting the two on billboards and releasing a new campaign commercial from Harris that emphasizes the relationship between the two Republican candidates as well as Robinson’s support for an all-out ban on abortion in the state.

Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Robinson ought to have an opportunity to refute the accusations, calling them “unnerving.” While maintaining that Robinson would not harm Trump, he called Robinson “a political zombie if he does not offer a defense to this that is credible.”

Regarding Robinson and the allegations in the CNN article, Graham said, “If they’re true, he’s unfit to serve for office.” “If they’re not true, he has the best libel lawsuit in the nation’s history.”