The 2020 North Carolina lieutenant gubernatorial election took place on November 3, 2020, to elect the Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, concurrently with the 2020 U.S. presidential election, as well as elections to the United States Senate and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections. Primary elections were held on March 3, 2020.
In North Carolina, the Governor and Lieutenant Governor are elected separately.
Incumbent Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest was re-elected to a second term in 2016, despite Republican Governor Pat McCrory losing reelection by a narrow margin. Forest was ineligible to run for a third term due to term limits established by the Constitution of North Carolina. He instead unsuccessfully ran for Governor.
The Republican Party nominated businessman Mark Robinson (a first time public office candidate), and the Democratic Party nominated state representative Yvonne Lewis Holley. Notwithstanding the winner, North Carolina would elect its first African-American lieutenant governor. Robinson won the general election, while Democratic incumbent Gov. Roy Cooper won re-election.
Because no candidate in the Democratic primary won more than 30 percent of the vote, second-place finisher Terry Van Duyn was entitled to call for a runoff, or "second primary," if she chose to do so. However, Van Duyn chose not to call for a runoff, and Yvonne Holley was awarded the Democratic nomination.
The Republican nominee attracted controversy in September as a result of his social media posts alleging negative Jewish influence in Hollywood, among other complaints. He claimed that the movie Black Panther was "created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist [sic]. How can this trash, that was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets, invoke any pride?" He also mischaracterized former first lady Michelle Obama as male and her husband Barack Obama as an atheist. Robinson stood by his comments in a September interview with Raleigh news station WRAL, stating, "I donâÂÂt back up from them a bit. May hurt some peopleâÂÂs feelings, some things that people may not like, but those are my personal opinions."
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Robinson won eight of 13 congressional districts.
Official campaign websites