North Carolina state Senator Rachel Hunt, a Democrat running to replace Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson in this year’s election, said in a recently circulated political ad that she’ll use a gallon of bleach to clean his office when she wins.
Robinson, a Republican, is running against North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, for the governorship. Meanwhile, Hunt, will face off against Hal Weatherman, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, in November.
Weatherman shared on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday a campaign ad in which Hunt goes to a closet of cleaning supplies, pulls out a gallon of 12 percent hydrogen peroxide and says, “And since I’m moving into Mark Robinson’s office, I’ll start with a gallon of this.”
The ad starts with a voice-over saying, “Who’s worse than Mark Robinson? His choice for lieutenant governor, Hal Weatherman,” and attacks Weatherman’s policies regarding women’s rights including abortion.
“I’m Rachel Hunt and as lieutenant governor, I’ll take on extremism in state government,” she said in the ad before grabbing the bleach from the supplies closet.
Weatherman wrote in his X post, “My opponent, a white liberal Democrat, explains how she will use bleach to clean the office of the previous BLACK Republican Lt Governor. Wow!”
Robinson then replied to Weatherman’s post questioning if the news media will report “that a white liberal just cut an ad claiming she needs bleach to clean up the office of the first black Lt. Governor of this state,” adding, “I suspect not.”
“Do not allow these racist, radical attacks and lies to divide us. Election Day is coming and we the people are ready for a better and brighter tomorrow,” Robinson wrote on Thursday evening.
Robinson, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, was under scrutiny last month after a bombshell CNN report was published alleging that from 2008 to 2012, Robinson made a series of inflammatory comments on a message board of the pornography site Nude Africa, which included calling himself a “black NAZI” and a “perv.” Robinson has repeatedly denied writing the posts.
Responding to Robinson’s post, Hunt wrote on X on Friday afternoon, “Hey Mark, ICYMI [in case you missed it]” and linked to the CNN report. She then listed bullet points that read: Antisemitism, racism, sexism and porn. “So yeah, there’s a lot to clean up,” she added.
Newsweek has reached out to Robinson and Weatherman’s campaigns as well as Stein and Hunt’s campaigns via email for comment Saturday afternoon.
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Robinson Porn Site Scandal
Despite Robinson using anti-transgender rhetoric in recent years, including when he used the word “filth” while discussing gay and transgender people during a 2021 speech at a church, he allegedly said on the porn site’s messaging board that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography.
In one of the porn site posts, Robinson allegedly described his sexual arousal as an adult from the memory of his 14-year-old self secretly “peeping” on women in public gym showers.
Robinson said at a campaign rally in February, “We’re going to protect our women” after suggesting that transgender women should be arrested for using women’s bathrooms.
The lieutenant governor called the porn site posts “salacious tabloid lies” to CNN and in a video message, he reassured his supporters that “those are not the words of Mark Robinson.”
Robinson’s campaign communications director Mike Lonergan blamed the reported posts on Stein and other Democrats in a previous statement to Newsweek.
“Everything Josh Stein [and] the Democrats say about Mark Robinson is either an outright lie or twisted so far out of context it might as well be,” Lonergan said. “The people of North Carolina have had enough lies from career politicians like Josh Stein—and that’s why they’ll elect Mark Robinson governor on November 5.”
