Republican Governor Candidate Longs for Days When Women Couldn’t Vote

Apparently quoting Hitler isn’t enough for North Carolina’s Republican nominee for governor. Mark Robinson also wants to take away women’s right to vote.

Robinson—a Hitler-quoting, LGBTQ-bashing, feminist-hating, conspiracy-pushing antisemite—won the Tar Heel State’s Republican gubernatorial nomination on Super Tuesday. Since then, a four-year-old video has resurfaced of him making yet more questionable comments.

During an event hosted in March 2020 by the Republican Women of Pitt County, Robinson, who was then running for lieutenant governor, mused on what would make America “great again.” He said someone had asked conservative activist Candace Owens which version of the U.S. was better: one where “Black people were swinging from cheap trees” or one where women weren’t allowed to vote.

“I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote,” Robinson said, apparently thinking that was an entirely normal and reasonable thing to say to a roomful of women.

According to Robinson, before women had the right to vote, “in those days we had people who fought for real social change, and they were called Republicans.”

The room was silent during Robinson’s comments, but apparently it wasn’t too off-putting to voters. Robinson went on to become lieutenant governor, and then he won his 2024 primary with 66 percent of the vote. Mathematically, some of those voters had to be women.

Robinson has long held other outrageous stances. He has said feminism was created by Satan, that feminist women are “fem-nazis,” and that feminist men are “about as MANLY as a pair of lace panties.”

In December 2017, he wrote on Facebook that, “The only thing worse than a woman who doesn’t know her place, is a man who doesn’t know his.”

Robinson has also quoted Hitler on social media. In 2014, he cited the genocidal German dictator’s stance on racial pride. Then, at a Moms for Liberty event in July, he defended his desire to quote Hitler.

In other posts, Robinson has downplayed the Holocaust, compared abortion to murder, and called LGBTQ people “filth” and “maggots.”