Mark Robinson was a porn shop regular in the 90s, former store employees say

Former workers at a series of porn shops in the Greensboro area say Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson visited their stores up to five times a week in the 1990s and early 2000s. 

In the 1990s, Mark Robinson worked at Papa John’s pizza on South Holden Road in Greensboro.

According to eyewitness accounts, that pizza sometimes found its way into the private screening rooms of two adult video stores that operated in the Gate City. New reporting by The Assembly revealed this week that Robinson, now the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, visited Gents Video & News and I-40 Video & News up to five times a week during the 90s and early 2000s to watch porn in a private booth – sometimes with pizza in hand. 

“Every night that I worked, which would have been five nights a week, I saw Mark,” Louis Money, a former employee at the stores, told The Assembly. 

Money also said Robinson, the state’s current lieutenant governor, purchased “hundreds” of bootleg porn videos he sold on the side. 

While five other men who were also employees or customers of the stores during this time backed up Money’s claims, Robinson and his campaign have aggressively denied that he ever visited the porn shops. 

“It’s false tabloid trash,” Robinson told radio host KC O’Dea on Wednesday.

Here are 5 things to know about Robinson’s alleged visits to the adult video shops. 

Robinson spent a lot of money at Gents

In his 2022 memoir, We Are the Majority, Robinson addressed his past financial struggles, which included three bankruptcies.

Robinson admitted that he “was guilty of bad money management; when I had money and should have been putting it in the bank or spending it on essential things … I was just throwing money away.”

According to Money, the porn shop employee, Robinson would usually pay for two $8 previews during each visit to Gents.

If Robinson did typically stop by five days a week and buy two previews, as Money says, this means Robinson would have spent $80 per week paying for pornography — more than $150 per week in today’s dollars.

“He was spending a good amount of money,” Money said.

At I-40, Scott Andrews, who also worked alongside Money, described Robinson as a “pretty regular” customer there.

Robinson was also homophobic back then

Since his emergence in North Carolina politics, Robinson has long made remarks disparaging the LGBTQ community, calling them “filth” and suggesting that LGBTQ-inclusive curricula in schools was comparable to — and we’re not kidding here — pornography. 

“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. When children were going to be dragged down to go see the drag show. When pornography was going to be presented to our children in schools,” he said last year.

In the 1990s, when Robinson frequented pornography shops, those who remember him say that while he was funny and often told jokes, those jokes often came at the expense of LGBTQ people, including those who came into the store.

“I hate to admit this, but he was very homophobic,” Money told The Assembly.

Despite these homophobic remarks then and now, Money claims Robinson carved out exceptions to his homophobia.

“I know he might have problems with gay people, but I don’t think he has problems with lesbians,” Money noted.

Robinson’s 2022 interaction with Money contradicts his campaign’s denial

In the campaign’s response to The Assembly’s article, campaign spokesperson Mike Lonergan described Money’s claims as “bullshit” and called him a “freak show grifter,” claiming Robinson only knows Money as someone who used to go to Papa Johns when Robinson worked there to get free pizza.

Money acknowledged that he asked Robinson for “a free pizza here and there,” but pointed to a 2022 interaction to show that their relationship was not what the campaign depicted. 

According to Money, Robinson approached him in November 2022 at a Planet Fitness in High Point. The two hadn’t seen each other in at least a decade, Money told The Assembly, but took a photograph together, which Money posted to social media with the caption: “I disagree politically with this guy. However, we have always been cool. That’s Our Lt. Governor who still owes me money lol.” 

“I was like, ‘Dude, I’m so proud of you, man,’” Money recalled. “‘I disagree with you. But I’m proud of what you accomplished for yourself.’” 

Money recorded a music video about Robinson owing him money

Money told The Assembly that the last time Robinson visited I-40, he bought a bootleg video from New York that, according to Money, was “too explicit to be sold in North Carolina at the time.”

He says Robinson never paid for the last $25 video, a fact he brought up in their 2022 interaction.

“I was like, ‘I’m so glad that you didn’t pay me,’” Money recalled saying to Robinson. “‘I tell everybody in the world that, you know, the lieutenant governor owes me money, so I don’t even want your money anymore.’”

Money claims the lieutenant governor laughed in response But, when he mentioned making a music video about it, Robinson didn’t laugh, Money said. 

This year, Money recorded the music video he alluded to in the 2022 interaction, titled “The Lt. Governor Owes Me Money.”

A direct contradiction to Robinson’s rhetoric as a candidate

As a candidate for office, Robinson has often lamented the decline in morality in America and discussed the need to more directly center God in our society.

He has gone as far as to blame school shootings on the lack of Christianity in schools, and has described school officials and teachers as “all-powerful bureaucrats … who believe it’s OK to feed your children a steady diet of communism and pornography.”

While Robinson writes in his memoir that he converted to Christianity in the 1980s, The Assembly story reveals Robinson visited Gents and I-40 more than a decade later. 

Andrews believes Robinson is running from his past.

“It’s like he’s embarrassed of who he used to be or whatever. I spent years as a Christian, too, but I didn’t run for office and get in pulpits and shout about all the craziness I used to do and yell at people for it,” he said.