Mark Robinson (American politician)

Mark Keith Robinson (born August 18, 1968 ) is an American politician who has served as the 35th lieutenant governor of North Carolina since 2021.

He is the first African American to hold the office of lieutenant governor in North Carolina.

He is the Republican nominee for Governor of North Carolina in the 2024 election.

On April 3, 2018, Robinson attended a meeting of the Greensboro City Council, where they debated whether or not to cancel a gun show in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.

Robinson spoke in favor of gun rights, and video of his speech went viral after it was shared on Facebook by Mark Walker.

Afterwards, Robinson dropped out of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and left his job in furniture manufacturing to focus on public speaking engagements.

He was invited to speak at the National Rifle Association of America's annual convention that year.

In 2019, Robinson entered the Republican primary in the election for lieutenant governor of North Carolina after the finance reporting period ended.

He won the Republican nomination, clearing the 30% threshold to avoid a primary runoff, defeating state senator Andy Wells, superintendent of public instruction Mark Johnson, former congresswoman Renee Ellmers, and former state representative Scott Stone.

He faced Democratic nominee Yvonne Lewis Holley in the general election in November, in a race in which either Robinson or Holley would become North Carolina's first African-American lieutenant governor.

Robinson was elected, becoming the second black person ever elected to the North Carolina Council of State (the first was Ralph Campbell Jr..)

Robinson defeated Democratic nominee Yvonne Lewis Holley in the 2020 lieutenant gubernatorial election.

Robinson has promoted various far-right conspiracy theories, has engaged in Holocaust denial, and has often made inflammatory anti-LGBT, antisemitic, racist, anti-atheist, and Islamophobic statements.

Robinson was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, as the ninth of ten children.

Robinson has said that his father was abusive and alcoholic, and that he and his family suffered from domestic violence; Robinson and his siblings lived in foster care for part of their childhood, before moving back in with their mother, who worked as a custodian.

After graduating from Grimsley High School, he served in the Army Reserve, later attending North Carolina A&T State University and working at several furniture factories in the Triad region.

While working in furniture manufacturing, he took history classes at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, with the goal of securing a degree and becoming a history teacher.

Robinson attributed the beginning of his interest in American conservative politics to his reading of a book by Rush Limbaugh, after which he "found out that I was conservative and always had been."

Robinson's 2020 campaign finance reports contained incomplete information on his campaign contributors.

Campaign finance watchdog Bob Hall identified several questionable expenditures in Robinson's campaign reports, including $186 for medical bills and for $2,840 for "campaign clothes and accessories" (most of it spent at a sporting goods shop); the campaign did not explain how these expenditures were campaign-related.

Robinson's reports also stated that Robinson's wife spent $4,500 for "campaign clothing" but gave no details.

The reports also stated that Robinson withdrew an unexplained $2,400 in cash in apparent violation of a state law requiring all candidate cash payments over $50 to be accompanied by a detailed description explaining of what the money was for.

After these expenses came under scrutiny in 2021, Robinson's campaign blamed "clerical errors"; Bob Hall filed a formal complaint with the State Board of Elections over these and other discrepancies.

Robinson promoted his persona as a "brash and unfiltered conservative culture warrior".

He opposes abortion, promotes climate change denial, and opposes the legalization of recreational marijuana.

He has indicated that he wants to remove science and social studies from first- through fifth-grade curriculum, abolish the State Board of Education, and expand charter schools and school voucher programs, potentially supplanting the public-school system.

Robinson's past antisemitic comments have drawn scrutiny and condemnation.

Prior to running for lieutenant governor, he frequently made Facebook posts that invoked antisemitic stereotypes and downplayed the harms of Nazism.

He claimed that the Marvel movie Black Panther was "created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists" that was "only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets" (using a Yiddish word for "black people").

Robinson also appeared at an interview with fringe pastor Sean Moon, who claimed that he planned to become "king of the United States"; in the interview, Moon claimed that the Rothschild family was one of the "four horsemen of the apocalypse" and promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory of a cabal of Jewish "international bankers" that rule every country's central bank.

Robinson endorsed Moon's claim as "exactly right".

Robinson's statements, as well as his refusal to apologize for or retract them, drew much concern from the leaders of North Carolina's Jewish community, as well as criticism from the Jewish Democratic Council of America and the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC).

Robinson declined to publicly apologize for any of his remarks, although he said he privately apologized to local Jewish leaders in a meeting in 2021.

In 2022, Robinson said that his Facebook post about Black Panther was "the only time I've ever apologized for anything I put on Facebook" and said "I knew the truth of what I was trying to say, but I should have chosen different words."

In October 2023, after Hamas attacked Israel, Robinson said he supported Israel and, when asked about his past antisemitic comments, said "I've never been antisemitic...There have been some Facebook posts that were poorly worded on my part, did not convey my real sentiments, and I have addressed those issues and moved on from those issues."

When asked if he apologized, Robinson said, "I apologize for the word — not necessarily for the content, but we apologize for the wording."

Robinson's opponents in the gubernatorial election questioned the sincerity of the apology and called his prior statements hate speech and antisemitism.

In March 2023, more of Robinson's past social-media statements emerged, including Facebook posts appearing to call the figure of 6 million Jews perishing in the Holocaust into question; for example, Robinson wrote: "this foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash," and "There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the '6 million Jews' they murdered."

Both Democrats and Republicans criticized Robinson's statements.

In a June 2021 speech at a Seagrove, North Carolina church, Robinson disparaged "transgenderism and homosexuality", saying: "There's no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth. And yes I called it filth. And if you don't like that I called it filth, come see me and I'll explain it to you."