If you live in North Carolina and don’t know who your lieutenant governor is, listen up. Mark Robinson is a self-proclaimed conspiracy theorist who is running for governor under the GOP ticket, Huff Post reports.
His random but dangerous ideologies range from the 1969 moon landing being fake to the September 11 terrorist attacks being an “inside job.” It doesn’t stop there. Robinson has targeted some of Black culture’s elite including Beyoncé and Jay-Z, calling their music “satanic” and “demonic,” sent by Satan to turn people away from Jesus.
On Facebook, he posted that the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls was planned by billionaire Democratic philanthropist George Soros. He also suggested that former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and CNN planted the pipe bombs found in October 2018, made for them. “If you can’t beat ’em, bomb yourself,” Robinson wrote.
However, his biggest attacks are primarily geared toward the LGBTQ+
community. In March 2023, during a church service held outside of Charlotte, Robinson preached that he was a vessel created by God to push against LGBTQ rights, which he described as turning America into a “hellhole.”“I was not crafted to be Mr. Nicey-Nice…God formed me because he knew there was going to be a time when God’s learning was going to be intolerable to the wicked,” Robinson said, according to WRAL. “Makes me sick every time I see it — a church that flies that Rainbow flag, which is a direct spit in the face of God almighty.”
With everything he has said in the past, Robinson is still a frontrunner for the state governor seat. Meredith College political science professor David McLennan says it’s thanks to the support of Donald Trump. “I think this does bother people on the Republican side,” McLennan said. “They just haven’t figured out how to organize their efforts to help another candidate compete against Robinson.”
Fellow professor Chris Cooper feels race has a factor in Robinson’s popularity. “He’s an African American Republican at a time when many Republicans feel they are being accused of being racist for being Republicans,” Cooper added.
Not all hope is lost as it is still early in the governor’s race. The state’s current attorney general, Josh Stein (D-NC), former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker, and state treasurer Dale Folwell are in the running.