Most of the senior staff members on Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign for North Carolina governor resigned on Sunday, dealing a seismic blow to the embattled Republican who has faced widespread criticism after an explosive CNN report that he had made a series of disturbing comments on a pornographic website.
Among the resignations was his top campaign consultant, Conrad Pogorzelski III, who for years had been one of Mr. Robinson’s most loyal confidants and who had been the only consultant to take a chance on him during his run for lieutenant governor four years ago.
Mr. Pogorzelski confirmed his resignation in a text message on Sunday evening, saying he and seven other campaign staffers had resigned on “our own accord.”
The other resignations included Chris Rodriguez, the campaign manager; Heather Whillier, the finance director; and Jason Rizk, the deputy campaign manager. Two political directors, John Kontoulas and Jackson Lohrer, and the director of operations, Patrick Riley, also resigned.
The 11th-hour shake-up in the campaign less than 50 days before the election will only exacerbate the troubles already plaguing Mr. Robinson, the fiery Trump acolyte who has been widely criticized for comments perceived as racist, antisemitic, transphobic and hateful.
CNN reported on Thursday that Mr. Robinson had written on a porn site years ago that he was a “black NAZI,” that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography and that slavery was not bad. He also recounted on the site how he went “peeping” on women in public gym showers as a teenager. Mr. Robinson has denied that he wrote the posts and ignored calls from some fellow Republicans to withdraw from the race.
He was not at a Trump rally on Saturday in Wilmington, N.C., and the former president did not mention his name once. Even some MAGA-faithful voters acknowledged that Mr. Robinson could hurt Mr. Trump’s chances of winning the battleground state, though most still said they supported him.
Republicans in the state have either ignored bringing up his name or advised Mr. Robinson to appropriately respond to the troubling allegations.
Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, wrote on X that Mr. Robinson should sue if the reporting on him was false, but that if the allegations were true, “he owes it to President Trump and every Republican to take accountability for his actions and put the future of NC & our party before himself.”
It was not immediately clear who would manage the campaign now for Mr. Robinson, who is down in recent polls by as much as 13 points against his Democratic opponent, Josh Stein, the attorney general of North Carolina.
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