Senior Staff Resign From Mark Robinson’s Campaign for North Carolina Governor

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson speaks at the 2024 Road to Majority Conference in Washington on June 21, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Several top employees of North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign for governor have resigned amid an ongoing scandal about comments he allegedly made on a pornographic website. The Republican nominee has denied the accusation.

Robinson’s campaign released a statement on Sept. 23 announcing the resignations of campaign manager Chris Rodriguez, deputy campaign manager Jason Rizk, finance director Heather Whillier, and senior adviser Conrad Pogorzelski III.

“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 wrote in the statement. “I look forward to announcing new staff roles in a couple of days.”

CNN reported on Sept. 19 that Robinson had allegedly written incendiary comments on a pornography website. The story led to widespread criticism of Robinson and calls from some Republicans to end his campaign because of the statements.

Robinson has vehemently denied making the statements. In a video message shortly before the story was published, he said the comments were fabricated and urged voters to focus on policy issues during the campaign.

“The things that you will see in that story, those are not the words of Mark Robinson ... You know that I have been completely transparent in this race and before,” Robinson said in the video, which was posted on social media platform X.

“Clarence Thomas famously once said that he was the victim of a ‘high-tech lynching.’ Well, it looks like Mark Robinson is, too.”

During Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s Senate confirmation hearing in 1991, Thomas called accusations of sexual harassment against him a “high-tech lynching for uppity-blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.”

The North Carolina Republican Party issued a statement criticizing Democrats for focusing on the scandal.

Most opinion polls show North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein leading Robinson by wide margins.

“Mark Robinson is unfit to become NC’s next Governor,” Stein wrote on X.

Several top Republicans have challenged Robinson to take legal action against CNN.

“If the reporting on Mark Robinson is a total media fabrication, he needs to take immediate legal action,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) wrote on X.

On Sept. 23, Robinson said he was in the process of retaining legal counsel to “hold CNN accountable.”

“We are in talks right now, everything up to legal counsel, to take CNN to task for what they have done to us. We are going after them for what they’ve done,” Robinson told reporters in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. “We are not going to let CNN throw us off of our mission.”

The Republican candidate also vowed to rebuild his campaign staff and said his campaign is “getting offers from all over.”

“We’re right in the process right now of forming a team that we know can still lead us to victory,” Robinson said.

Neither Robinson’s campaign nor CNN responded to a request for comment from The Epoch Times by publication time.