FILE - Gubernatorial candidate North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein speaks before Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at Hendrick Center for Automotive Excellence at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh, N.C., Aug. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
Stein was a strong and polished candidate, and may have been the slight favorite no matter his opponent, but Robinson’s record made Stein’s job easier than most of the other Democrats running in the state.
Josh Stein beat Mark Robinson in the race to be North Carolina’s next governor on Tuesday.
NBC News and DecisionDesk HQ called the race for Stein, who holds a 20.5-percentage point lead over Robinson, with 8% of the vote counted.
Stein, the state’s current attorney general, campaigned on his record of addressing the opioid crisis, protecting consumers and defending reproductive rights. He also pledged to continue many policies of the man he will be replacing, Gov. Roy Cooper, who in 2020 got more votes in the state than Donald Trump.
Stein was a strong and polished candidate, and may have been the slight favorite no matter his opponent, but Robinson’s record made Stein’s job easier than most of the other Democrats running in the state.
Robinson’s campaign started with excitement among Republicans that they could recapture the governor office after eight years of Cooper, who won his first election by inches and his second by miles.
Much of the final months of the campaign, however, were devoted to coverage of Robinson’s several scandals, including a report that in the years before he entered public office, he posted graphic, racist, and pornographic comments on an adult website messaging board.
But while those stories caused some Republicans to pull away from him, Robinson was already trailing Stein in several polls, in large part because his aggressive anti-abortion rhetoric and record of violent, bigoted, and sexist comments were already well known.
A Stein ad, for example, highlighted Robinson’s comment that abortion was not about protecting the life of the mother, it was about getting pregnant “because you couldn’t keep your skirt down.”
Those views made Robinson one of the most extreme candidates in North Carolina’s recent history — and voters rejected him for it on Tuesday.
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