As Mark Robinson’s Campaign Crumbles, North Carolina Republicans Seethe

The scandal surrounding Mr. Robinson has incensed party officials and donors, some of whom described longstanding concerns about his campaign.

Six weeks before Election Day, the Republican Party in North Carolina is in an extraordinary standoff with its own nominee for governor.

After a CNN report last week linked the candidate, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, to offensive comments on a porn website, donations to his campaign have dried up. Most of his staff has resigned. Incensed Republican officials, donors and lawmakers want him to drop out, but Mr. Robinson has refused to quit.

The question now, party leaders say, is whether he will sink other Republican state and local candidates with him.

The deadline to replace Mr. Robinson on the ballot passed last Thursday, hours after the report that he had written years ago on the porn site that he was a “black NAZI,” that slavery was not bad, and that, as a teenager, he had gone “peeping” on women in public gym showers.

If anyone manages to force him to leave the race, his name will remain on the ballot. In one scenario, the state party would need to find a replacement candidate and explain to the electorate that a vote for Mr. Robinson is technically a vote for the replacement. It remains unclear who would want to run under the tarnished Robinson banner.

If Mr. Robinson remains on the ticket, though, he will likely continue to face a barrage of negative press that could hurt down-ballot candidates and, possibly, former President Donald J. Trump, who believes he must win North Carolina to win the election.

“The governor’s race is typically one that drives the organization in the state, the get-out-the-vote and the ramping up of enthusiasm in the rank-and-file party people,” said Robert Orr, a Republican and former North Carolina Supreme Court associate justice who is voting for Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee for governor and the attorney general of North Carolina.

Mr. Robinson has denied that he wrote the comments on the porn site, but some Republicans have called on him to provide proof; on Tuesday, he said he had hired a lawyer to “investigate where and how these false smears originated.”

“If he can’t offer any evidence, then he needs to resign as our lieutenant governor, and then he needs to withdraw as a candidate for governor because there are a lot of other people on the ballot that can be affected by this,” said Jim O’Neil, a Republican and the district attorney in Forsyth County, where Winston-Salem is the county seat. “We’re not ostriches. We can’t go bury our heads in the sand on this thing.”

He and other Republicans are eager to head off damage to years of conservative gains in North Carolina, which have been achieved largely because the party has kept control of the legislature over the eight years that Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, has been in office.

With most of his original advisers gone and no future ad buys announced by the Republican Governors Association, Mr. Robinson has struck a defiant tone since the scandal broke.

At a campaign stop in Taylortown, N.C., on Friday, he said in a brief interview that he had not spoken with the chairman of the state Republican Party, Jason Simmons, about strategy.

“We’re running our own campaign and running on our own steam,” Mr. Robinson said.

Even before the scandal, Mr. Robinson had been slipping in the polls all summer while Mr. Stein defined him on the airwaves as an extremist with a history of repellent remarks.

At a meeting in late July, Mr. Robinson shouted at members of the legislature’s Republican House Caucus, saying that he needed more support from them to salvage his campaign.

Several caucus members were stunned by the outburst, according to three people familiar with the meeting who described it on the condition of anonymity because the conversations were private.

Mr. Robinson frequently left a bad impression on wealthy donors, whose money he desperately needed in order to compete with Mr. Stein’s massive fund-raising figures, according to five people who were involved with his campaign, attended donor meetings and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Harry Smith, the chief executive of Rise Capital and a former chair of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, who has made significant donations to Republican candidates in the past, said he invited Mr. Robinson to his home more than a year ago to get to know him. He was unimpressed, he said, but decided to contribute anyway.

“I wrote a check for $6,400 early on and very much regret it,” said Mr. Smith, who is voting for Mr. Stein and Mr. Trump.

Some Republican donors also said they questioned how the campaign’s money was being spent. The latest campaign finance report shows that the Robinson campaign had raised $15.8 million as of July. Conservative Connections, the firm owned by Mr. Robinson’s former chief consultant, Conrad Pogorzelski III, received about $2 million of that; The Whillier Group Inc, which was run by the former finance director of the campaign, Heather Whillier, received $1.3 million.

“Donors, elected officials and consultants have been privately raising concerns about Robinson’s excessive spending since the primary, especially on his top two operatives,” said Heather Dickson, a Republican fund-raiser in the state, referring to Mr. Pogorzelski and Ms. Whillier, both of whom resigned on Sunday.

Mr. Pogorzelski said in a statement that there were “always critics who don’t understand how this works, and the difference between a firm being paid for services and an individual making money.” He added that he was proud of the campaign he had run, and that his team was “able to accomplish things no other Republican gubernatorial candidate has ever done, breaking fund-raising and grass roots records.”

Ms. Whillier did not respond to requests for comment. Two people close to the Robinson campaign said that, since the CNN story broke, donations had stopped and a number of fund-raisers had been canceled.

As Mr. Robinson continues to campaign, Republican strategists are shifting their attention to legislative races in order to keep their supermajorities in the state House and Senate. Each chamber is holding on to its supermajority by a single vote.

They are also concerned about races for top state offices, such as the race for state attorney general, which had already been close before the CNN report.

Michele Woodhouse, the Republican Party chair for the 11th Congressional District, said she does not believe that Mr. Robinson’s scandal will deter voters from electing other Republicans on the ballot.

“At the grass roots level, I feel like everybody really is on the same sheet of music,” Ms. Woodhouse said. “They understand the importance of delivering North Carolina for Trump.”

A handful of Republican officials have vocally defended Mr. Robinson. The Forsyth County Republican Party posted on X on Tuesday that “what the Democrats have done to Robinson is a modern-day lynching.”

Still, even some of the most faithful conservative voters have begun to second-guess their choice for governor.

Tina Watson, 53, owns the Blue Ridge Diner in Boone, N.C., where Mr. Robinson stopped by on Monday afternoon to shake hands with customers and tell them that the news media was reporting “trashy lies.” Ms. Watson said she had agreed to host the candidate before learning about the allegations about the porn site comments.

A Republican, she said she wanted to give Mr. Robinson a chance to defend himself and sell his platform. By the end of his speech, she was certain her vote would not go to Mr. Stein. Did that mean Mr. Robinson would get it?

“I’m still making up my mind,” Ms. Watson said.