The great Republican wave that swept the South beginning in the late 20th century—the same wave that Lyndon Johnson predicted after signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964—came relatively late to North Carolina.
But when the blow finally came in 2013, with Republicans controlling both the legislature and the governor’s mansion for the first time since Reconstruction, it did so with breathtaking force. Led by a group of savvy and tactically adept lawmakers, North Carolina Republicans set out to undo decades of center-left Democrats’ entrenched policies and reshape the rules of the political game in their favor.
They carried out redistricting that allowed the party to retain nearly all of the state legislative power and lopsided control of the state House delegation in Congress. They paved the way for a conservative state Supreme Court that upheld a strict voter ID law. And after winning a veto-proof majority last year, they banned most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.
And even though Republicans lost the governorship in 2016, they had hoped to regain full control of state government this year, bringing North Carolina into line with most other Southern states.
Then came Mark Robinson.
Long before this week, when CNN reported that Mr. Robinson had called himself a “black NAZI!” discussed his pornography habits and praised slavery in an online adult forum, the belligerent Republican gubernatorial candidate (and current lieutenant governor) was polling poorly against his Democratic rival, Josh Stein.
But now more than ever, Mr. Robinson, with his anti-Semitic and anti-gay rhetoric and his performative, polarizing style of politics, is sending waves of anxiety throughout the ruling party.
Former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, who was narrowly ousted in 2016, said Friday that Robinson posed a threat to Republicans’ many gains in the state. “He’s the most effective and dangerous populist I’ve ever met,” McCrory said in an interview.
Mr. McCrory proudly recalled the period a decade ago when his party was in charge, saying: “My administration and many members of the legislature were extremely serious people about fiscal responsibility, long-term economic development policy and infrastructure.”
Mr. Robinson, he said, is a completely different man. In 2018, he was working in furniture manufacturing when he gave a speech against gun control at a Greensboro City Council meeting. The speech went viral, eventually leading to his election as lieutenant governor in 2020.
Mr McCrory said he was initially intrigued by Mr Robinson but came to the conclusion he cared little about policy-making and budgets.
Robinson said the online posts that undermined his campaign this week were fakes generated by artificial intelligence. He also said he has no plans to drop out of the gubernatorial race.
His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
CNN’s report, released Thursday, raises questions about whether the scandal could hurt former President Donald J. Trump’s chances of winning North Carolina and its potentially crucial 16 Electoral College votes.
But within the state, Republicans are also wondering what damage could be done to candidates by remaining on the ballot. Dallas Woodhouse, the former head of the state Republican Party, said Friday that the party could lose the narrow legislative supermajorities that recently allowed it to override vetoes by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who is leaving office because of term limits.
This year, Republicans also have an extreme candidate for superintendent of public schools. The party’s candidate for that position, Michelle Morrow, once proposed executing former President Barack Obama and showing the execution on pay television.
These candidates have few, if any, analogues in North Carolina’s recent past, according to John Hood, a longtime conservative commentator in North Carolina. Mr. Hood said it was not yet clear whether candidates like Mr. Robinson and Ms. Morrow were anomalies or the new future of the Republican movement in the state.
Mr. Hood, who also teaches at Duke University, said that by 2010, the year the party took control of the legislature, its leaders had moved away from the racist rhetoric of Jesse Helms, the former U.S. senator who embodied the vestiges of old segregationist sentiment in the state.
But many North Carolina liberals argue that the party has continued following the old strategy, albeit in a more subtle form, particularly when it comes to issues such as redistricting and voting rights.
In federal and state courts, the Republican surge led to years of intense legal skirmishes over redistricting that overwhelmingly handed Republicans victory. Many in the party saw those and other changes as much-needed correctives to decades of Democratic dominance and redistricting.
Few moves cemented the Republican political monopoly more than the decision to hire Thomas B. Hofeller, the undisputed master of redistricting, to draw the state’s congressional and legislative seats in 2011 and 2017. After his daughter released computer files of his work following his death in 2018, Mr. Hofeller — whose primary work was for the national Republican Party — was revealed as the architect of successive redistrictings that largely enshrined the GOP’s control of the state’s political boundaries for more than a decade.
The North Carolina Supreme Court flipped from a Democratic to a Republican majority in 2022, a shift facilitated by decisions by the Republican legislature to end public financing of judicial campaigns and make elections to the court partisan. One of the new majority’s decisions upheld a strict voter ID law; another allowed the legislature to draw new district maps that heavily favor Republicans.
It was during Mr. Robinson’s campaign for lieutenant governor in 2019 that some of his incendiary Facebook comments came to light. Yet many Republican leaders saw in Mr. Robinson, who is Black, a potentially promising newcomer with humble roots and a preacher’s aura who could help diversify the party.
But in March, buoyed by the party’s Trump-aligned base, Mr. Robinson decisively defeated two other moderate Republicans to become the party’s nominee for governor.
Paul Schumaker, a veteran Republican strategist, had sounded the alarm earlier this year about Mr. Robinson, saying his toxic style of politics would be detrimental to the ticket.
Phil Berger, the top Republican in the state Senate, may have seen things differently.
For him, “the goal is to maintain a veto-proof majority in the legislature” regardless of the governor, said Jonathan Bridges, a Republican consultant in Wilmington.
Mr. Bridges, however, said that Republican leaders in Congress believe they can take control of politics if Mr. Robinson wins the race. “If Robinson becomes governor, that would be the cherry on top,” he added.
Mr. Berger did not respond to requests for comment.
Carter Wrenn, who was an adviser to Mr. Helms, the former North Carolina senator, said Mr. Helms was viewed as a divisive and problematic figure by many voters in the 1980s, much in the same way Mr. Robinson is viewed today.
President Ronald Reagan’s support for Mr. Helms carried a lot of weight then, Mr. Wrenn said. Although Mr. Trump warmly endorsed Mr. Robinson in March, it remains to be seen what position he will take toward Robinson’s campaign in the future.
While Robinson’s candidacy threatens to upend his party’s well-laid plans for governance, a number of conservatives say his winning the nomination may have been inevitable, given the Trumpist passions that continue to inflame the Republican base in North Carolina and beyond.
“I think the idea that someone could have snapped their fingers and done something is just a fantasy, right?” said Mr. Woodhouse, who is now state director of American Majority, an organization that trains grassroots conservative activists. “The voters have made their choice.”
