Mark Robinson’s Republican gubernatorial campaign in North Carolina was already struggling. In fact, while the Tar Heel State appears to be highly competitive at the presidential level this year, every recent poll has shown Robinson trailing Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein — in some surveys,

Washington — North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, posted a slew of incendiary, explicit and racist comments on a pornographic website more than a decade ago, according to a CNN investigation released Thursday that has shaken the state’s gubernatorial race.

A North Carolina loss could not only foil Trump’s re-election chances, it would be a particular home-state humiliation for his two handpicked co-chairs of the Republican National Committee: Michael Whatley, who is the state’s former GOP chair, and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, who is a North Carolina native.