Opinion | I Cannot Have That Man Be My Governor: Inside Josh Steins Bid to Beat Mark Robinson in North Carolina

Candidates strive to be bold contrasts to their opponents.By that measure, Lt.

Gov.Mark Robinson has been running a spectacularly successful campaign for governor of North Carolina, and the past several days were absolutely phenomenal.While his rival, Josh Stein, the state’s Democratic attorney general, was staying true to his low-key, lawyerly approach, Robinson, the Republican nominee, was angrily denying a report by CNN that between 2008 and 2012, he frequented a pornographic website where he called himself a “black NAZI,” praised slavery and boasted of various sexual proclivities and quirks.After the lurid news broke Thursday, Stein’s aides refrained from gloating, releasing a platitudinous statement that he is “focused on winning” and intent on “a safer, stronger North Carolina for everyone.” That ceded the spotlight to Robinson, who was plenty busy.

First he beat back rumors that Donald Trump’s allies — terrified that Robinson could cost Trump victory in a crucial swing state — were pressuring him to drop out of the contest.Then, on Sunday, he acknowledged the departure of at least four key campaign officials, who resigned amid the tumult.

In short order, Colin Campbell of WUNC reported that the exodus went well beyond that and Robinson was down to “just three people working on his campaign.”Robinson has blamed his latest travails on nefarious liberals and the evil news media, his pique reflecting his predicament: At this point, he’s probably doomed.Trump certainly seems to think so.

Although he gushed early this year that Robinson was “better than Martin Luther King,” he didn’t so much as utter Robinson’s name on Saturday at a rally in Wilmington, N.C., where Robinson was conspicuously absent.But while the campaign for North Carolina governor inhabits its own special category of bizarre, it also belongs fully and fascinatingly to this moment in time.It’s even, to some degree, the presidential contest in miniature, wi...