Mark Robinson campaign hemorrhages senior staff amid porn scandal: 'Difficult choice'
Senior staff for North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson's campaign resigned over the weekend amid allegations that he posted lewd posts to a porn website more than a decade ago.
Campaign manager Chris Rodriguez, general consultant and senior adviser Conrad Pogorzelski III, finance director Heather Whillier and deputy campaign manager Jason Rizk quit, according to The Washington Post.
Other members of the campaign who have also jumped ship include the director of operations, the deputy finance director and two political directors.
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"I appreciate the efforts of these team members who have made the difficult choice to step away from the campaign, and I wish them well in their future endeavors," Robinson said in a statement. "I look forward to announcing new staff roles in the coming days."
The resignations came days after an investigation by CNN alleged that Robinson, who serves as the state's lieutenant governor, made a slew of vulgar, offensive posts between 2008 and 2012 on the message board of a website called "Nude Africa."
Under the username "minisoldr," Robinson allegedly described himself as a "perv" and a "black Nazi," expressed a desire that slavery return and wrote extensively about his longtime fondness for voyeurism and transgender pornography.
Robinson also allegedly disparaged Martin Luther King Jr. with vulgar, racial epithets and noted that he would prefer to live under the regime of Adolf Hitler than the government of President Barack Obama. He also allegedly praised Hitler's book "Mein Kampf."
Robinson, an outspoken conservative who has been vocal about his opposition to transgender ideology, has denied that he made the Nude Africa posts. However, CNN corroborated its investigation by linking the porn site account to him via email addresses, his uses of the same username elsewhere and unusual phrases that Robinson has publicly used.
Since the story dropped, Robinson's alleged posts have been removed from the Nude Africa site, according to CNN.
The Trump campaign has seemingly distanced itself from Robinson after the allegations were revealed, despite Trump formerly touting him as "Martin Luther King Jr. on steroids." He was neither invited nor mentioned during Trump's recent rally in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, has neglected to say whether he believes Robinson's denial.
"I don't not believe him. I don't believe him. I just think that you have to let these things sometimes play out in the court of public opinion," Vance told a reporter on Saturday.
"He's going to make whatever arguments he wants to make. I'm sure the news media and others are going to investigate these comments further," he added. "I just think that fundamentally, it's Mark Robinson and the people of North Carolina that get to decide whether he's their governor, and that's what we're going to focus on."
Robinson's Democratic opponent, the state Attorney General Josh Stein, is leading him by approximately 10 percentage points, according to most recent polling.
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to [email protected]
