Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, was embroiled in a serious and disturbing scandal last week. WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson says in his “On My Mind” commentary that Robinson’s desire to get noticed was the catalyst.

Mark Robinson will not be governor of North Carolina.

He was already trailing Josh Stein by double digits in the polls, and Thursday’s CNN report detailing the vile things he had written for years on a porn site’s message board destroyed his slim chance.

Just to be clear, Robinson is not withdrawing from the race and denies making those comments. But I’m not sure how anyone can read that CNN piece and not think it was him. And part of the reason for that is all the other inflammatory things he has said publicly and on video about women, gays, transgender people and Jews, not to mention specific people like former President Obama or Ellen DeGeneres.

Robinson is finished. And I’m not going to lie – it would be easy and fun to trample on the ruins of his campaign.

But this morning I want to do something different. I want to try to understand a man who has said and done so many senseless things.

Robinson clearly takes his cues from Donald Trump. In fact, he would never have won public office if Trump had not built a secular religion based on anger and outrage.

But I think there is a difference. Trump ultimately craves power. He wants to be a strong man like his dictator buddies.

I think Mark Robinson just wanted attention.

He says and does all these outrageous things in the desperate hope that someone will notice him.

How lonely and socially aloof do you have to be to regularly leave comments on a porn site’s message board?

How important is it for you to be visible, to call yourself a “black NAZI” or to say that you want the reintroduction of slavery?

Robinson doesn’t have a following like Trump does. He just has a grip on Trump’s shirttails. And I suspect that even Trump’s people are in the process of disowning him.

From what Robinson has said and written, he had a difficult childhood, including being in foster care. I don’t know if that’s why he developed such a strong need for attention. Voters probably don’t care.

But I wonder what he thinks today about the day that changed his life.

In 2018, he gave a fiery pro-gun speech as a private citizen at a Greensboro City Council meeting. That speech went viral and he was invited to speak so many times that he quit his job. Just two years later, he was elected lieutenant governor. Suddenly, everyone was paying attention to Mark Robinson.

And now, one election cycle later, his personal life has been exposed, his reputation is ruined, and his political career is most likely over.

Sometimes the worst day of your life is the day you get what you want.