Mark Robinson’s Top Staff in the Lieutenant Governor’s Office Plan to Resign

Senior staff members in the office of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina have said they will resign on Oct. 1, becoming the latest people to abandon Mr. Robinson, the state’s Republican nominee for governor,in the wake of a CNN report that linked him to disturbing comments on a porn site.

Those resigning include Brian LiVecchi, the chief of staff and general counsel; Jonathan Harris, the policy director; John Wesley Waugh, the director of communications; and Nathan Lewis, the director of government affairs. Mr. LiVecchi confirmed the resignations in a brief phone call on Wednesday afternoon.

On Sunday, most of the senior employees of Mr. Robinson’s campaign for governor also resigned.

On Wednesday morning, Mr. Robinson told other Republicans around the state in a virtual meeting that he had hired Matt Hurley to be his new campaign manager, according to two people briefed on the decision who were not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Hurley is also a senior political strategist at Southeastern Strategies. He has repeatedly advocated for Mr. Robinson on X.

Mr. Hurley told county chairs in the meeting that he had previously worked on Mr. Robinson’s team and that he would be announcing new staff hires soon.

The Republican Governors Association said earlier this week that it had not made any new ad buys in North Carolina since the CNN report was published on Thursday. Mr. Robinson has denied that he wrote the offensive posts, but some of his conservative allies have asked him to either provide evidence or leave the race.

According to the CNN report, Mr. Robinson wrote on a porn site years ago that he was a “black NAZI,” that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography and that slavery was not bad. He also recounted on the