On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson won the GOP primary to become his party’s nominee for North Carolina governor, presumably with the help of female voters.
But just four years ago, Robinson invoked a bizarre hypothetical in which he said he’d “absolutely” like to return to the days when the 19th Amendment didn’t exist ― when women didn’t have the right to vote.
“I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote,” Robinson said in a newly resurfaced video of his remarks at a March 2020 event hosted by the Republican Women of Pitt County.
During this event, Robinson, who was running for lieutenant governor at the time, recalled someone recently asking conservative activist Candace Owens to pick which version of America would make America “great again,” one where “Black people were swinging from cheap trees” or one where women weren’t allowed to vote.
Robinson said he would definitely return to the days in America when women were denied the right to vote “because in those days we had people who fought for real social change, and they were called Republicans.”
This room full of women was quiet as he spoke, though a faint “That’s right” could be heard when Robinson later said Republicans ended Jim Crow laws. (In fact, lawmakers in both parties in Congress and President Lyndon Johnson ended Jim Crow laws by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.)
You catch watch the full clip of Robinson’s remarks here:
Requests for comment from Robinson’s campaign and from his government office were not returned.
The North Carolina Republican’s longing for the days when women couldn’t vote ties into his history of demeaning women and mocking feminism, especially on social media. He’s claimed that feminism was created by Satan. He’s said that men who identify as feminists are “about as MANLY as a pair of lace panties” and are “weak mined, jelly backed ‘men.’” He’s routinely referred to feminists as “fem-nazis” and, in one particularly colorful post, described those who support equal rights for women as “sexist, hairy armpit having, poo-poo hat wearing pinkos.”
“The only thing worse than a woman who doesn’t know her place, is a man who doesn’t know his,” he wrote on Facebook in December 2017.
Channeling the late televangelist Pat Robertson, he has claimed that Satan himself is using “lesbianism and feminism” to destroy traditional families.
In still more Facebook posts, the GOP gubernatorial nominee strangely equated feminism with sexism and racism.
“If blacks should stand up against racism, and women should stand up against sexism....shouldn’t men stand up against feminism?” he posted on Sept. 20, 2016.
That same day, he also wrote, “I am REALLY sick of feminism and feminist. They are just as bad, if not worse, than racist.”
There’s plenty more to revisit with Robinson’s attacks on women, including calling them “whores,” “witches” and “rejected drag queens.” There’s also his record of quoting Adolf Hitler, fanning Islamophobia, saying trans people should be arrested for using bathrooms, casting doubts on the Holocaust and spreading countless dangerous conspiracy theories.
He has criticized women who breastfeed in public, too.
“Shameless attention hogs,” Robinson posted on Facebook in 2016.
Robinson will go up against Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein in November. North Carolina is a crucial swing state in the 2024 presidential election. Former President Donald Trump won North Carolina in 2020, but barely ― and that was before he tried to steal the election, incited an insurrection and was facing 91 felony charges.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who endorsed one of Robinson’s challengers in the GOP primary, said Wednesday that it’s up to the voters in his state to decide in November if they want him to be the governor.
Asked if he agrees with Robinson’s inflammatory rhetoric, Tillis told HuffPost, “Not at all.”
“Now that we’re past the primary ... he just needs to go to the people in North Carolina, explain that and get their vote,” he said.
Igor Bobic contributed reporting.