'Some folks need killing': Mark Robinson’s 13 most extremist controversies and scandals

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee in the North Carolina governor’s race, spoke from the pulpit at the Lake Church in the state’s southeast on the last Sunday in June, just before the Fourth of July holiday.

A large Black man with a shaved head and trim salt-and-pepper goatee, Robinson paced the floor and scowled while preaching a hellfire sermon of conservative paranoia. An all-white group of parishioners sat behind them. They shifted uncomfortably in their seats, smiling thinly and clapping occasionally.