Stein wins NC Governor race in heated race against Robinson, CBS projects

RALEIGH, N.C. — Democrat Josh Stein has been named the projected winner of the North Carolina governor race, according to the Associated Press, defeating Republican Mark Robinson by a sizeable margin.

Stein was first elected to public office back in 2008 when he was voted to represent North Carolina’s 16th district in the state senate. He eventually left the state senate after winning the Democratic nomination for Attorney General in 2016.

When he defeated Republican Buck Newton to win the attorney general race in 2016, Stein became the first Jewish person to win a statewide election in North Carolina. He was re-elected in 2020 after defeating Republican Jim O’Neil.

As part of his duties as Attorney General, Stein has worked to eliminate the backlog of untested sexual assault kits in North Carolina. He also led a bipartisan effort of state Attorneys General to negotiate a settlement framework with drug companies over the opioid epidemic.

Most recently, Stein and a group of 11 other Attorneys General sued TikTok, alleging that parent company ByteDance Ltd. "designed its app to be addictive while misrepresenting the mental, emotional and physical risks the app posed to young users."

Robinson, the state’s current lieutenant governor, could not recover from the shadow cast over his campaign by the CNN story that alleged he made several sexually explicit and racist comments on a pornography website several years ago.

Stein is now the first Jewish governor in North Carolina history.

Make sure to stay updated on our election coverage throughout the night. 

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