Mark Robinson’s Republican gubernatorial campaign in North Carolina was already struggling. In fact, while the Tar Heel State appears to be highly competitive at the presidential level this year, every recent poll has shown Robinson trailing Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein — in some surveys, by double-digit margins.

But the right-wing candidate’s difficulties are far from over. The latest reporting from CNN has made matters even worse for Robinson.

BLN added that it was able to verify that the username belonged to Robinson “by matching a litany of biographical details and a shared email address between the two.” Robinson denied the accuracy of the reporting, which has not been independently verified by BLN or NBC News.

Complicating matters, Blue Light News also published a new reportwhich has also not been independently verified by BLN or NBC News, alleging that an email address belonging to Robinson “was registered on Ashley Madison, a website designed for married people seeking affairs.”

The report added that an adviser to the gubernatorial candidate confirmed to Blue Light News that “the email address in question belongs to Robinson.”

To be sure, the extremist candidate was a scandalous figure before these revelations reached the public. What’s more, the GOP candidate has been forced to confront a variety of controversies in recent weeks, related to everything from pornography to abortionbankruptcies to contraception.

But by any fair measure, the newest allegations, if accurate, are the most brutal. Republicans tend to do well in North Carolina, but when a struggling candidate is credibly accused of describing himself as a “black NAZI!” who doesn’t think slavery was necessarily a “bad” thingit’s a tough sell to the state’s electorate.

Shortly before BLN published its report, the right-wing candidate recorded a brief online statement in which he insisted he was “staying in this race.”

The video was released just hours before North Carolina’s deadline for Robinson to withdraw from the race, which would allow party officials to choose a new candidate. It also coincided with multiple published reports that the gubernatorial hopeful was facing pressure to end his campaign — and by some accounts, that pressure included calls from some working on behalf of Donald Trump’s campaign.

As things stand, Robinson is still a candidate who hopes to become the chief executive of a large state. That said, he and his party have some questions to answer.

Will Robinson ignore the pressure to quit? Will Trump, who has repeatedly and publicly praised Robinsoncut him loose? Will the gubernatorial candidate’s scandals hurt other GOP candidates in North Carolina? Will his party redirect resources to other contests?

Will other Republican officials and candidates, many of whom have cozied up to Robinson for yearsstart pretending not to know him? Will conservative media outlets and personalities start walking back their years’ worth of praise for the radical candidate?

Watch this space.

Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”