Who is Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina?

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson secured the Republican nomination for governor on Tuesday, continuing his meteoric political rise in a key battleground state.

Robinson, 55, is now set to face his Democratic opponent, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, in the November general election. Both men would be groundbreaking if elected: Mr. Robinson would be the first black governor, while Mr. Stein, 57, would be the first Jewish governor.

Mr. Robinson has built a reputation as a political stickler and paved his way to the executive mansion in Raleigh, in part through incendiary comments on social issues that have mobilized his Trump-aligned base and rebuffed Democrats.

Here are five things you need to know about Mr. Robinson.

His political career was fueled by online support.

On April 3, 2018, the Greensboro, NC, city council considered canceling a gun show after facing public outcry following the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead at a high school.

Mr. Robinson, who grew up in Greensboro, about 75 miles northwest of Raleigh, was outraged by the cancellation. He gave a speech at the council meeting that evening, and videos of it circulated widely in conservative circles and were viewed millions of times.

“We want our rights, and we want to keep our rights,” Mr. Robinson said said at the meeting. “And by God, we’re going to keep them, come hell or high water.”

He was invited to speak at gun meetings and then left his job in furniture manufacturing.

He made history as the first black lieutenant governor of North Carolina.

Bolstered by his image as a political outsider and advocate for gun rights, Mr. Robinson ran for lieutenant governor in 2020. His win made him the first Black person in North Carolina to hold the position.

It was the first elected office he had ever held, and the position raised his profile. But he had little influence on policy. Mr. Robinson and Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, have had an acrimonious relationship and have not worked closely together.

The lieutenant governor in North Carolina presides over the Senate, but has no vote unless the Senate is evenly divided, similar to the vice president of the United States.

His upbringing was difficult.

Mr. Robinson has said that growing up poor in Greensboro shaped his political philosophy. He wrote in his autobiography “We Are The Majority!” that his father was an alcoholic and abusive to his mother, and that his parents relied on government assistance to support their ten children. Mr. Robinson was the second youngest.

“Even as a child I felt the imbalance, the wrongness of it,” Mr. Robinson wrote of the abuse. “At a young age I started thinking about the world in terms of what is fair or unfair, right or wrong.”

Like former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Robinson has also expressed anger at the North American Free Trade Agreement, which in the 1990s caused manufacturing jobs to shift from North Carolina to states with lower labor costs. Mr Robinson has said he has lost two jobs as a result of the trade pact.

His wife had an abortion decades ago, and it has shaped his views on the issue.

Mr. Robinson supports a so-called heartbeat law, which would ban abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, when many women do not yet realize they are pregnant.

Such a measure would roll back abortion rights in North Carolina: Republicans used their new supermajority in the legislature last year to ban most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Mr. Robinson’s campaign spokesman said Mr. Robinson supported exceptions for rape, incest or when the mother’s life was in danger. But the spokesperson did not specify after how many weeks these protections would apply.

Mr. Robinson has publicly discussed how his wife, Yolanda Robinson, had an abortion in 1989, a year before they married. The couple later had two children.

Mr Robinson said in a Facebook video in 2022 that the couple’s decision to have an abortion had been ‘wrong’ and that this had been the catalyst for the couple’s anti-abortion views that later developed.

He has long espoused anti-LGBTQ views.

Since gaining a political platform, and even before that on his personal Facebook page, Mr. Robinson has hurled disparaging comments at the LGBTQ community, anchoring his attacks in his Christian faith.

He has said that it makes him sick when he sees a church flying the rainbow flag, describing this as a “spitting directly in the face of God.” He also told a congregation that “there is no reason why anyone anywhere in America should have to tell a child about transgenderism, homosexuality or any of that filth.”

In February, Mr. Robinson said transgender women who use women’s restrooms “will be arrested,” following the so-called bathroom bill that state lawmakers passed in 2016. That measure proved unpopular due to its negative economic effects, and Mr. Cooper signed legislation repealing it in 2017.