Mark Robinson

minisoldr

Mark Keith Robinson (born August 18, 1968) is an American former politician who served as the 35th lieutenant governor of North Carolina from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Republican Party, he was the party's nominee in the 2024 North Carolina gubernatorial election. He was North Carolina's first Black lieutenant governor and the first Black major party nominee for governor. Born in Greensboro, Ro...

Mark Keith Robinson (born August 18, 1968) is an American former politician who served as the 35th lieutenant governor of North Carolina from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Republican Party, he was the party's nominee in the 2024 North Carolina gubernatorial election. He was North Carolina's first Black lieutenant governor and the first Black major party nominee for governor. Born in Greensboro, Robinson worked in furniture manufacturing for several years before entering politics. He came to prominence in 2018 when a video of him defending gun rights at a Greensboro City Council meeting in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting went viral. Robinson launched his first political campaign in the 2020 North Carolina lieutenant gubernatorial election and defeated Democratic state representative Yvonne Lewis Holley. Near the end of his term, Robinson won the Republican nomination for governor. His campaign was checkered by a history of incendiary and controversial statements, including about abortion, Adolf Hitler, the LGBTQ community, women's rights, civil rights, and Holocaust denial. Robinson was also linked to extremist comments on an online pornography forum during his campaign. After losing the election to Democratic state attorney general Josh Stein, Robinson announced his retirement from politics. Early life and education Mark Keith Robinson was born on August 18, 1968, in Greensboro, North Carolina, as the ninth of 10 children. Robinson has said that his father was abusive and alcoholic, and that he and his family suffered from domestic violence. He and his siblings lived in foster care for part of their childhood, before moving back in with their mother, who worked as a custodian. After graduating from Grimsley High School, Robinson joined the Army Reserve. While working at several furniture factories in the Triad region, he attended North Carolina A&T State University, and then enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he took history classes with the goal of becoming a history teacher. He graduated from the university with a B.A. degree in history in December 2022. Political career Robinson attributed the beginning of his interest in American conservative politics to his reading of a book by Rush Limbaugh, after which he "found out that I was conservative and always had been". On April 3, 2018, Robinson attended a meeting of the Greensboro City Council, where they debated whether or not to cancel a gun show in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Robinson spoke in favor of gun rights, and video of his speech went viral after it was shared on Facebook by Mark Walker. Afterwards, Robinson dropped out of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and left his job in furniture manufacturing to focus on public speaking engagements. He was invited to speak at the National Rifle Association of America's annual convention that year. 2020 campaign In 2019, Robinson entered the Republican primary in the election for lieutenant governor of North Carolina after the finance reporting period ended. He won the Republican nomination, clearing the 30% threshold to avoid a primary runoff, defeating state senator Andy Wells, superintendent of public instruction Mark Johnson, former congresswoman Renee Ellmers, and former state representative Scott Stone. He faced Democratic nominee Yvonne Lewis Holley in the general election in November, in a race in which either Robinson or Holley would become North Carolina's first Black lieutenant governor. Robinson was elected, becoming the second Black person elected to the North Carolina Council of State after Ralph Campbell Jr. Robinson's 2020 campaign finance reports contained incomplete information on his campaign contributors. Campaign finance watchdog Bob Hall identified several questionable expenditures in Robinson's campaign reports, including $186 for medical bills and for $2,840 for "campaign clothes and accessories" (most of it spent at a sporting goods shop); the campaign did not explain how these expenditures were campaign-related. Robinson's reports also stated that Robinson's wife spent $4,500 for "campaign clothing" but gave no details. The reports also stated that Robinson withdrew an unexplained $2,400 in cash in apparent violation of a state law requiring all candidate cash payments over $50 to be accompanied by a detailed description explaining of what the money was for. After these expenses came under scrutiny in 2021, Robinson's campaign blamed "clerical errors"; Bob Hall filed a formal complaint with the State Board of Elections over these and other discrepancies. Tenure as lieutenant governor Robinson was sworn in on January 9, 2021. During his tenure, Robinson had a fraught relationship with Democratic Governor Roy Cooper; Robinson described communication between the two as "nonexistent". As lieutenant governor, the Constitution of North Carolina prescribed that Robinson serve as acting governor when Cooper left the state, although Cooper regularly did not inform Robinson on his departures. As lieutenant governor, Robinson was empowered to preside over sessions of the North Carolina Senate, but did not do so frequently after his first year in office, instead leaving that duty to the Senate president pro tempore. Robinson was also, by virtue of his elective office, an ex officio member of several state boards. As of September 2024, he had attended most of the Council of State's meetings, approximately half of the State Board of Education's meetings, four of the State Board of Community Colleges' meetings, four of the Energy Policy Council's meetings, and none of the Military Affairs Commission's meetings. In 2023, Robinson convinced the legislature to pass legislation establishing the North Carolina Medal of Valor for law enforcement officers and making his office responsible for its implementation. When Robinson's successor, Rachel Hunt, moved her office into the Hawkins-Hartness House, which serves as the official office of the lieutenant governor, in January 2025, her administration found that many of the furnishings and office equipment had been removed by Robinson. FACTS Task Force After swearing into office, Robinson began focusing on education issues, particularly with regard to the appropriateness of instructional and reading materials available to children enrolled in schools. On March 26, 2021, he launched the FACTS (Fairness, Accountability in the Classroom for Teachers and Students) Task Force through his office's website. The 12-member task force was to field reports of political bias in instruction in public schools. The task force was later expanded to 15 members. The task force failed to comply with the state open meeting law by not maintaining records of its meetings or transactions. The lieutenant governor's general counsel argued that the task force was not obligated to do so, as it was not a "public body" and existed only to advise the lieutenant governor's office. The chief attorney of the General Assembly's Legislative Analysis Division disagreed, saying that the board met the criteria under state law for being considered a public body. Further ambiguity surrounded the task force's legal status, as state law did not explicitly authorize or prohibit lieutenant governors from creating their own official boards. The task force released a report on submitted complaints in late August 2021. Over 500 complaints pertained to allegedly biased lesson plans and instructional materials concerning race and LGBTQ rights and Christians, while others directly attacked the task force itself as a fishing expedition and a waste of resources. That month, Robinson pushed for the adoption of a bill in the legislature that sought to prevent teachers from compelling students to adhere to 13 specific beliefs, including notions that one race or sex is superior to others. 2024 gubernatorial run On April 22, 2023, Robinson announced his campaign for the Republican nomination for governor of North Carolina during a speech at Ace Speedway in Altamahaw, North Carolina. On March 3, 2024, former president Donald Trump, then a candidate for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, endorsed Robinson, referring to him as "Martin Luther King on steroids" and "Martin Luther King times two", though Trump characterized Robinson's reaction to this description as possibly "angry" or akin to "I don't know if I like that". On March 5, Robinson won the Republican primary in the governor's race. Robinson is the first Black person to secure a major party nomination for the office of governor of North Carolina. In his victory speech, he departed from his earlier statements on social issues, instead speaking about his impoverished background and emphasizing his wish to strengthen the state's economy. During his 2024 campaign, Robinson received some criticism from some more moderate Republicans, including U.S. Senator Thom Tillis and his primary opponent State Treasurer Dale Folwell, both of whom declined to endorse him or any candidate in the election. On September 19, 2024, CNN reported that Robinson had made many graphic remarks on the online pornographic forum Nude Africa from 2008 to 2012 under the username "minisoldr", with Robinson being linked to accounts named "minisoldr" on several websites, including Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Disqus, and BlackPlanet. The remarks made on Nude Africa included expressing support for slavery, using various homophobic, racial, and antisemitic slurs, enjoying transgender pornography, admitting to peeping at women showering in public showers without their knowledge when he was 14 and continuing to fantasize about the experience as an adult, self-identifying as a "perv", and calling himself a "Black Nazi" and stating his support for Adolf Hitler over Barack Obama as United States president. Another remark labelled Martin Luther King, Jr. a "commie bastard" and then stated: "If I was in the KKK I would have called him Martin Lucifer Koon!" CNN highlighted that "minisoldr" on Nude Africa shared many of Robinson's personal details, and used several unconventional phrases that Robinson later used on Facebook from 2014 to 2017. Robinson denied the allegations. Without any evidence, he accused Josh Stein, his main opponent for the governorship, of being responsible for the discovery of the Nude Africa account and claimed that the account was generated by artificial intelligence. The Nude Africa posts by "minisoldr" were deleted on the same day as CNN's report about them. Weeks prior, online publication The Assembly had published allegations by six people who said they witnessed Robinson visiting video pornography shops up to five times a week in Greensboro in the 1990s and 2000s. Politico published a story, on the same day as CNN, reporting that Robinson's email was registered on Ashley Madison, a website designed for married people seeking extramarital affairs. Then, The Washington Post reported that "minisoldr" on Nude Africa discussed having extramarital sex with his wife's sister, and also praised Hitler's Mein Kampf. Politico followed up by reviewing data breaches from multiple websites and found that Robinson's email address had also been registered with other previously unreported dating websites, and that the IP address associated with these accounts (including the Nude Africa account) was from a location not far from Robinson's home. Before the CNN and Politico stories broke, Robinson was reportedly pressured by staff and members of the Trump presidential campaign to withdraw from the gubernatorial race due to rumors of a controversial story leaking to the news that involved Robinson's activity on pornographic websites in the 2000s. Jonathan Bridges, who managed the campaign of former congressman Mark Walker, and Scott Lassiter, a Republican candidate for state senate, both called on Robinson to suspend his campaign