North Carolina Atty. Gen. Josh Stein was elected governor on Tuesday, defeating Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and maintaining Democratic leadership of the chief executive’s office in a state where Republicans have recently controlled the legislature and appeals courts.
Stein, a Harvard-trained lawyer, former state senator and the state’s chief law enforcement officer since 2017, will succeed fellow Democrat Roy Cooper, who was term-limited from seeking reelection. He will be the state’s first Jewish governor.
Democrats have held the governor’s mansion for all but four years since 1993, even as the GOP has held legislative majorities since 2011.
As with Cooper’s time in office, a key task for Stein likely will be to use his veto stamp to block what he considers extreme right-leaning policies. Cooper had mixed success on that front during his eight years as governor.
Otherwise, Stein’s campaign platform largely followed Cooper’s policy goals, including those to increase public school funding, promote clean energy and stop further abortion restrictions by Republicans.
Stein’s campaign dramatically outraised and outspent Robinson, who was seeking to become the state’s first Black governor.
For months Stein and his allies used television ads and social media to remind voters of previous inflammatory comments that Robinson had made about abortion, women and LGBTQ+ people that they said made him too extreme to lead a swing state.
Robinson’s campaign descended into disarray in September when CNN reported that he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago. Robinson denied writing the messages and sued CNN and an individual for defamation in October.
In the days following the CNN report, most of his top campaign staff quit, many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates — including presidential nominee Donald Trump — distanced themselves from his campaign, and outside money supporting him on the airwaves dried up. The result: Stein spent millions on ads in the final weeks, while Robinson spent nothing.
The son of a prominent civil rights lawyer, the 58-year-old Stein grew up in Chapel Hill and went to Dartmouth and Harvard Law School. He managed John Edwards’ winning 1998 U.S. Senate campaign and worked in the 2000s as Cooper’s consumer protection chief while Cooper was attorney general.
Stein succeeded Cooper as attorney general, but his 2016 and 2020 general election victories were extremely close: fewer than 25,000 votes both times.
While attorney general, he promoted his efforts to protect citizens from polluters, predatory student loans and high electric bills.
Stein took credit with lawmakers for eliminating the backlog for testing thousands of sexual assault kits in police custody, saying it led to additional DNA matches for unsolved crimes. He also sued TikTok, alleging the company designed the app to be addictive and misrepresented the risks it posed to young users.
Stein angered Republicans with his decision to end the state’s defense of a 2013 voter ID law that was struck down, and of some abortion restrictions.
And while he co-chaired a task force in 2020 that offered scores of recommendations on how to eliminate racial inequities in criminal justice, liberal activists complained the next year that his office failed to do enough to protect civil rights.
Robertson writes for the Associated Press.
