RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper is calling on the state's lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, to step down over allegations of racist and explicit comments exposed in CNN reporting last month.
Cooper, a Democrat, made the comments on Tuesday against Robinson, who is a Republican.
" I have said for years that he should step down from his position because of extreme positions that he has taken in his attacks on people," Cooper said. "I don't think he's qualified."
Cooper was asked for comment on Tuesday just over an hour after Robinson announced a lawsuit against CNN.
The CNN report last month said Robinson left statements over a decade ago on the message board in which, in part, he referred to himself as a “black NAZI,” said he enjoyed transgender pornography, said that he preferred Hitler to then-President Barack Obama, and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot.”
Robinson's lawsuit says that CNN “chose to publish despite knowing or recklessly disregarding that Lt. Gov. Robinson’s data — including his name, date of birth, passwords, and the email address supposedly associated with the NudeAfrica account — were previously compromised by multiple data breaches,” the lawsuit states.
In North Carolina, the governor and lieutenant governor are elected separately by voters. Therefore it is possible the two top positions atop the executive branch of the state government could come from different political parties.
Under state law, Robinson would become acting governor if Cooper were to leave the state for any reason, including travel.
Both men hold their current offices until January. Cooper will leave because of term limits. Robinson is the Republican candidate in the November election to take the governor's job.
Polls at the time of the CNN report already showed Democratic rival Josh Stein, the sitting attorney general, with a lead over Robinson. Early in-person voting begins Thursday statewide, and well over 50,000 completed absentee ballots have been received so far.
The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, comes less than four weeks after a television report that led many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, to distance themselves from Robinson's gubernatorial campaign. Robinson announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Raleigh.
In addition to saying that Robinson should step down, Cooper called on Robinson and his followers on Tuesday to stop spreading misinformation about Hurricane Helene relief efforts.
"We want to make sure that the disinformation that the lieutenant governor is perpetuating and continuing to share on social media... that we protect people on the ground in trying to get the true information to people," Cooper said. "He needs to stop it and there are other people who need to stop this disinformation, which is ending up hurting people who've lost everything."
The Associated Press contributed to this report