Trump-backed GOP leader Michael Whatley launches U.S. Senate campaign in North Carolina

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, the longtime ally of President Donald Trump and former leader of the state GOP, launched a campaign Thursday to seek his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis.

“We will fight for a strong economy, safe communities, an America that is respected around the world,” Whatley said at a campaign kickoff event in Gastonia, where he lives. “And we will win because we will fight every single day for North Carolina and the values that we hold so dear.”

The decision sets the stage for what is likely to be a heavyweight political battle, pitting the behind-the-scenes political insider — who has never run for elected office — against former Gov. Roy Cooper, a high-profile Democrat who has managed to win multiple statewide elections in years when Trump carried the state.

Whatley has his own record of leading high-stakes Republican campaigns across the state as chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party from 2019 to 2024. He helped the GOP gain control of the state Supreme Court and state Court of Appeals, helped the party regain veto-proof majorities in the state House and the Senate, and helped it rebound from bribery and election fraud scandals involving GOP operatives and donors prior to his time in charge.

Trump has credited Whatley with helping him carry North Carolina in presidential elections — a record he mentioned when encouraging Whatley to run in a social media post last week. "Mike would make an unbelievable senator from North Carolina,” Trump said in the post, adding that Whatley had earned his “complete and total endorsement.” The president praised Whatley for his positions on immigration, law enforcement, tax policy and gun rights.

Whatley and other speakers at his campaign launch heavily promoted the candidate’s connection to Trump. Whatley himself spent much of his 20-minute speech praising the president’s policies, mentioning the Trump name more than a dozen times. His campaign website, which launched Thursday before the event, bears a prominent image of Whatley and Trump together, both with thumbs up. “President Trump deserves an ally, and North Carolina deserves a strong conservative voice in the Senate,” Whatley said Thursday. “I will be that voice.”

Former lieutenant governor candidate Andy Nilsson and former congressional candidate Don Brown are also seeking the Republican nomination. They told WRAL that they plan to stay in the race.

Brown said the GOP base tends to be skeptical of establishment officials, and he thinks many Republicans will view Whatley as just that. Nilsson said: “It's really going to come down to who's got their thumb on the pulse of the people of North Carolina the best.”

Whatley is expected to win the GOP primary because he is endorsed by Trump and known as a prolific fundraiser, political analysts and Republican insiders tell WRAL.

“Trump's endorsement is a seal of approval for Republican primary voters,” said Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College. “They will be the ones deciding this contest in March, and so certainly, getting that cue and that signal from the president sends a very clear message.”

Within minutes of launching the campaign, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-SD, endorsed Whatley. So did the Senate Leadership Fund and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, two deep-pocketed political action committees that will likely spend tens of millions of dollars on the race.

For Whatley, connections to Trump and major GOP donors will help him compete in what is expected to be one of the most closely watched — and perhaps most expensive — U.S. Senate races in 2026.

Republicans are trying to retain the seat to maintain their narrow control of the chamber. Democrats need to flip at least four seats during the midterm elections to regain control of the U.S. Senate for the last two years of the Trump administration. The race is considered one of three toss-ups in the nation in 2026 by the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan group that analyzes campaigns.

Unaffiliated voters make up the biggest voting bloc in the state, followed by Democrats and Republicans, respectively. But Republicans have edged out Democrats in many statewide elections in recent years — especially in U.S. Senate races.

“North Carolina is a closely divided state, and so it's not going to be an easy election by any stretch of the imagination,” David McLennan, a political scientist at Meredith College, told WRAL News last week.

Cooper — who also served in the state legislature and as attorney general — is viewed by many Democrats as their best chance of winning a U.S. Senate seat since 2008, when Kay Hagan defeated Elizabeth Dole. Cooper managed to remain popular in polls over the course of a political career dating back to the 1980s. He’s undefeated in statewide elections.

Cooper was on the running-mate short list for Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential run but removed himself from contention in part because he wanted to run for the Senate seat. Democrats appear to be happy with the decision; Cooper raised about $3.4 million in the 24 hours after announcing his campaign — one of the biggest first-day totals for Democratic Senate candidates.

The same reasons Democrats are excited about Cooper – his fundraising prowess and ability to win statewide races — are the same reasons Tillis is warning Republicans not to underestimate him. “He’s someone who knows how to manage—who knows how to get the vote of the 60% of the people in North Carolina who are unaffiliated,” Tillis told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.

But he thinks Whatley’s experience running the Republican Party at the state and national level is an advantage.

“Michael is a pretty tough guy,” Tillis said. “He's up for it.”

Trump loyalist

Tillis said last month that he wouldn’t seek reelection following a public rift with Trump. The state’s senior senator voted against Trump-backed legislation — the wide-ranging bill that sponsors titled the One Big Beautiful Bill — because it would end Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians. After Trump said he would consider endorsing other Republicans for the seat, Tillis ended his reelection plans.

Whatley is expected to be a more reliable supporter of Trump than Tillis, who has received considerable pushback from the GOP base during the Trump era. The state party in 2023 voted to censure Tillis for going against the party's views on key issues such as supporting bipartisan federal legislation, including a law codifying gay marriage.

In the walk-up to the 2024 presidential election, Whatley frequently leaned into cost-of-living messaging amid rapidly rising inflation. In interviews and stump speeches, he regularly tied rising consumer prices — from energy to groceries to housing — to the policies of then-President Joe Biden and later extended the blame to Vice President Kamala Harris, after she took over Biden’s presidential campaign. Whatley also has focused on other themes popular with the GOP base in public remarks — on government spending, “woke ideology,” transgender issues, and his efforts to recruit election monitors across the country while also advancing false claims of 2020 voter fraud.

At a conference for young Republicans this month, Whatley credited Trump with tempering inflation, improving immigration enforcement and pinching the supply of drugs entering the country. “What we've seen over the last six months is promises made and promises kept,” Whatley said July 12 during a speech at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in Tampa. He added that Trump “knew that we can take America in a radically different position,” and he praised Congress for passing the wide-ranging policy bill that caused Tillis to drop out. Whatley underscored provisions of what sponsors titled the One Big Beautiful Bill, commending its directives on taxes, immigration enforcement and energy.

He touched on many of those topics during his speech on Thursday, praising the bill for its national security provisions.

Democrats have already begun attacking Whately for his support of the bill, painting him as a Washington insider who isn’t in touch with the needs of North Carolinians while promoting Cooper’s experience in office. They’re also pushing back against Whatley’s characterization of Cooper as being focused only on donations from donors in big cities outside of North Carolina.

“I don't necessarily think that Michael Whatley has got the best interest of North Carolinians,” North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton said Thursday in an interview. “He's got the best interest of billionaire backers and donors right now who want to see a Republican hold this seat at any cost. And we need to make sure that North Carolinians know we're going to send somebody to Washington, D.C., who's got a North Carolina agenda, not a Republican agenda.”

Tillis has spoken with Whatley to prepare him for the onslaught of attacks the candidate can expect on the campaign trail.

“Michael's just got to be prepared for criticism he's going to get that is unfounded, the same criticism I would have gotten,” Tillis told reporters this week.

Cooper, who has also begun campaigning on cost-of-living themes, zeroed in on the bill’s Medicaid provisions in his fundraising campaigns and recent speeches.

The former governor takes credit for his efforts to convince the Republican-led legislature to expand coverage in North Carolina — a move that brought in billions of dollars a year for the state’s health care industry by providing health insurance for hundreds of thousands of previously uninsured residents.

“Politicians in D.C. are running up our debt, ripping away our health care, disrespecting our veterans, cutting health for the poor and even putting Medicare and Social Security at risk just to give tax breaks to billionaires,” Cooper said in his campaign announcement. “That's wrong, and I've had enough.”

Cooper’s campaign responded quickly to Whatley’s announcement Thursday, referring to the Republican as a “D.C. insider” in a statement and saying “North Carolinians don’t need a lobbyist as their senator.”

Republicans — including Whatley on Thursday — are painting Cooper as a far-left elitist who failed to achieve other policy objectives in the Republican-led legislature.

Whatley sought to tie Cooper to the left wing of the Democratic Party, painting congressional Democrats as weak on crime, immigration and supportive of more government spending and higher taxes. Roy Cooper may pretend to be different from the radical extremists that run today's Democratic Party, but he is all in on their agenda,” Whatley said.

Republicans are also expected to attack Cooper for the state’s slow response to hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018. With the shadow of 2024’s Hurricane Helene still to be looming in the 2026 race, those earlier disaster responses could also feature prominently in GOP attack ads.

Whatley on Thursday made a point to note his involvement in the relief efforts. Trump in April appointed Whatley to the Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council, a bipartisan group tasked with improving the agency’s disaster response.

“We’ve had a dramatic improvement with a whole-of-government recovery effort, which has seen billions of dollars provided to affected homeowners, small businesses and local communities,” Whatley said. “And we have seen an amazing effort by the [U.S. Army] Corps of Engineers to clean up the debris from roadsides and waterways and private property.”

Rise to RNC

Whatley grew up in Watauga County. As a high school student, he volunteered for the late U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms' 1984 reelection campaign. He then began his professional career in politics as a legal advisor for the George W. Bush presidential campaign, helping with the 2000 vote recount in Florida. He transitioned to the U.S. Department of Energy under Bush and then worked as chief of staff for Dole, who represented North Carolina in the U.S. Senate from 2003 to 2009. He left Dole’s office in late 2003 and spent the next 19 years working as a lobbyist, mostly for the oil and gas industry, before being named the top lawyer for the national Republican Party in 2022, a role he balanced with leadership of the state party before taking control of the national GOP in 2024.

When Whatley returned to North Carolina in 2015, he was an early supporter of Trump’s GOP campaign. Whatley then served as an advisor to the Trump campaign while continuing to work primarily as an energy consultant until 2019, when he ran for chair of the state party.

Party operatives have praised Whatley for stabilizing the state party after its former chairman, Robin Hayes, was indicted for lying to federal officials amid a bribery investigation.

During his time as the state party chair, Whatley helped the Republicans gain control of the state Supreme Court and state Court of Appeals and gain veto-proof supermajorities in the state House and the Senate. Trump also won North Carolina in 2016 and 2020 with the help of Whatley.

Despite that record, Whatley faced criticism from some in North Carolina’s GOP base.

Businessman John Kane Jr. ran against Whatley for state party chair in 2023, alleging that Whatley didn’t do enough to quell concerns about election integrity in North Carolina — claims Whatley refuted. It didn’t help then that Whatley won reelection amid irregularities with the party’s mobile voting app — prompting a legal challenge that was later dismissed.

In a July 24 social media post, Kane predicted that Cooper would win the race. He said Whatley’s campaign “will be defined by out of state [money] trying to buy grass roots support that’s not for sale.”

Still, Republicans in Washington say they’re now more confident in their odds of keeping the seat than they were when Tillis was in the race.

Trump endorsed Whatley to be chairman of the RNC in early 2024 after expressing frustrations with Ronna McDaniel, who had served in the role since 2017.

After Tillis dropped out of the race, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a letter to donors saying that it is “more confident than ever” that the GOP will be able to keep the North Carolina seat red.

The NRSC is a leading Washington, D.C., group that helps elect Republicans to the U.S. Senate. Numerous internal polls of the race showed Tillis down at least 9 points in hypothetical head-to-head races against Democrats, according to a Republican operative with direct knowledge of the polls. Those same polls also showed a generic Republican outperforming Tillis against Cooper.
Tillis said he’d do what he can to make sure a Democrat doesn’t gain control of the seat.

“We should all assume we’re running from behind,” he told reporters Tuesday. “Because, next year, we may be.”

WRAL Capitol Bureau Chief Laura Leslie and CNN contributed to this report.