RALEIGH — Voters in North Carolina selected Democrat Josh Stein to be the state’s next governor on Tuesday, bringing to a close a campaign that drew the attention of the country, often for the wrong reasons.

With 2,288 of 2,658 precincts reporting, Stein had garnered 55% of the vote; his Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, received about 40% of the vote.

Stein told an enthusiastic crowd gathered at the Raleigh Marriott City Center to watch results come in that he wants to be a governor for every North Carolinian, not just those who voted for him. 

“If I didn’t earn your vote in this election, I hope to earn your trust by working hard for you as your governor,” he said. “I pledge to listen and work across party lines to do what’s right for North Carolina because no person or party has a monopoly on good ideas.”

Stein was joined onstage by his wife, Anna, and their three children, who he addressed directly. “Mom and I love you very much and are so proud of you,” he said. “Fundamentally, this campaign is about you and all the young people of North Carolina. We want all of you to want to call North Carolina home, just like we do.”

Stein called being a North Carolinian a “blessing” and said: “And while nowhere is perfect, I firmly believe that whatever may be wrong with our state can be repaired by all that is right.”

In his concession, delivered from the Raleigh City Club, Robinson said serving as the state’s first Black lieutenant governor has been the honor of a lifetime and that he appreciated all the hard work by campaign volunteers. “We knew we were just an ordinary person getting into this for the right reasons, to fight for the people of North Carolina, to make effective change,” he said. 

Scrutiny abounded in North Carolina’s 2024 gubernatorial race. The Robinson campaign was rocked by scandals related to news reports about the candidate’s alleged conduct years ago, including regularly patronizing a Greensboro porn shop and leaving lewd, racist and pro-Nazi comments on the message boards of a pornography website.

Robinson has denied the reports and filed a lawsuit against CNN, which published the report about the website comments, and a North Carolina man who is the source for the story about Robinson’s activities in Greensboro.

The charges were provocative enough to ensure the controversy worked its way from news articles to cable television, late-night comics and, eventually, a skit on “Saturday Night Live.” 

On the campaign trail, Stein drew attention to allegations contained in the news reports while also saying Robinson had disqualified himself well before they were published with a long record of objectionable comments on topics such as abortion and homosexuality. 

The Stein campaign reported collecting $44.6 million in contributions during a three-and-a-half-month period ending in mid-October. Robinson’s campaign raised $4.1 million. The Stein campaign reported spending $59.3 million during that period, while the Robinson campaign spent just under $10 million. 

For Robinson, the defeat interrupts a political run that saw him bypass local and lower-level state office to run for lieutenant governor based on grassroots popularity that began in 2018 after he delivered a fiery speech against gun regulation to the Greensboro City Council. 

Recent reporting has shown that, while in office, Robinson skipped many of the traditional duties of the lieutenant governor. He presided over the North Carolina Senate just three times in 2024, for instance, and wrote just 31 substantive emails in three years in office.

Robinson said no decisions have been reached about what is next for him. “We haven’t even thought about that yet,” he said. “I mean, we have thought about it, but we have to have family discussions about that —, my wife and I — about what we want to do.”

Stein, 58, followed a traditional pathway to the executive mansion. Two of the last three Democratic governors — Roy Cooper and Mike Easley (2001-2009) — were attorneys general before taking office, while Bev Perdue (2009-2013) had served two terms as lieutenant governor following a decade in the state Senate and four years in the state House. The state’s last Republican governor, Pat McCrory (2013-2017), had served as mayor of Charlotte, the state’s largest city, for 14 years. 

Stein represented Raleigh in the state Senate for eight years before beginning his two terms as attorney general. His political story, however, reaches back a generation to when his father, civil rights attorney Adam Stein, moved to Charlotte in 1967 to establish the state’s first integrated law firm with Julius L. Chambers and James Ferguson. 

The firm, Stein said on the campaign trail, “won path-breaking victories in this nation’s legal struggle against discrimination and for equality. They never backed down from doing what was right, not even when someone firebombed their office and burned it to the ground. They, and so many other heroes across the state, teach us that some things are worth fighting for, no matter how tough it is.”

With the victory, Stein becomes the state’s first Jewish governor. “My faith teaches me that we’re each called to do our part and to make a difference,” he told rally audiences. “And my folks, they raised my brother, sister and me to try to do what was right, just like they did.”

Despite polling over the past several months indicating it was Stein’s race to lose, he continued to campaign vigorously, prompting supporters to vote for Democrats across the board and making sure they understood the importance of breaking the Republican supermajority in the Legislature. 

Article III, Section 2, of the North Carolina Constitution stipulates that the four-year terms of newly elected governors begin the first day of January. Inaugural festivities are planned for Jan. 9-11. 

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For questions or comments, or to pass along story ideas, please write to Clifton Dowell at [email protected] or @StateAffairsNC on X.

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