Josh Stein, the Democratic candidate, won the race to be North Carolina's next governor, according to a call from the Associated Press based on results from absentee mail-in ballots and votes from precincts coming in Tuesday.
The results include nearly three-quarters of all precincts in North Carolina. Stein led Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson by 53% — 42%.
Stein is a lawyer who was elected to the state Senate in 2008, where he served until 2016. That’s when he won his first race to be the state’s attorney general, a position he’s held since.
He will succeed Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who was prohibited by term limits from seeking a third term after eight years in office. Stein will also be North Carolina's first Jewish governor.
"We chose hope over hate, competence over chaos, decency over division. That’s who we are as North Carolinians. And I’m so honored that you have elected me to be your next governor," Stein told supporters at Democrats' watch party in Raleigh.
Robinson conceded shortly after 9 p.m. He said he wasn't sad, and was proud of the race he ran. He cast his loss in terms of faith, saying he was sure his side would triumph in the end.
"Those who would promote evil and promote wrong and call it right, they do not win," he said. "They may prosper for a season, but in the end we win."
Robinson then closed with a quote from Richard Nixon's 1974 resignation speech. He noted Nixon was a much "maligned" politician.
"Only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain," he said.
Robinson has been a controversial figure for years. A former furniture factory worker, home daycare co-operator and pizza parlor manager, he rose to prominence in 2018 when he blasted anti-gun activists at a Greensboro City Council meeting. A video of that speech went viral.
He was courted by conservatives drawn to his fiery speeches, ran for and won lieutenant governor in 2020. Hailed by Donald Trump as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” Robinson seemed set to rise even higher in a MAGA-fueled political climate.
But his prolific past online posting caught up with him, as well as past legal and financial troubles. Robinson, along with his wife, had filed for bankruptcy three times; lost a car and a house to repossession; been cited by state regulators for safety, cleanliness and false paperwork problems at their daycare; been sued by the Girl Scouts; accused of passing bad checks; ordered to repay $132,000 worth of improper payments from the federal government from their nonprofit that administered daycare food aid; and, during the campaign’s closing days, been sued by a polling vendor for $114,000 worth unpaid bills.
Robinson has also long been a controversial figure for his social media posts and other comments, which were widely seen as racist, sexist and anti-Semitic, including calling homosexuality “filth” and appearing to question the death toll of the Holocaust. The hammer blow came in September, when CNN published a report linking Robinson to racist comments made on the porn forum Nude Africa made more than a decade ago, as well as reminiscences about peeping on women in a public shower and enjoying transgender porn.
Robinson denied the porn forum posts were made by him, and sued CNN several weeks later for defamation. But his support from other Republicans dried up, along with fundraising, and though Robinson continued to campaign he soon trailed Stein by a massive 21 percentage points.
Speaking before polls closed Tuesday at Robinson's watch party at the City Club in Raleigh, Matt Hurley, Robinson's chief strategist, said the campaign was confident Robinson could pull off an upset.
"The media and some people in the political class, see some of the campaign struggles as much more detrimental to him than it really is personally to him," he said. "(Robinson's) undergone and had much more traumatic days in his life than the last six weeks. And so I, I would say he's strong, resilient, him and his family are solid. You know, he's like us optimistic and hopeful for a shock win."
