Democrat Roy Cooper and Republican Michael Whatley will face off in North Carolina’s Senate race after projected wins in their respective primaries on Tuesday, teeing off a pivotal contest expected to be one of the most expensive in the country.
With Cooper as their nominee, Democrats are hopeful they can flip the seat currently held by retiring Sen. Thom Tillis and take control of the Senate.
“There’s no doubt — we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Cooper posted on X Tuesday night. “But North Carolinians have always given me hope and that’s what’s going to get us across the finish line.”
History is not in Democrats’ favor. Voters in the swing state haven’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 2008, and Republican voters now outnumber Democrats. Democrats courted Cooper, a former governor, for months in hopes he would enter the race.
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“There is a viable path to [Democrats winning] the Senate — viable, but narrow — and the first step in that path is really North Carolina,” said Asher Hildebrand, a former Democratic operative and public policy professor at Duke University.
Cooper won his statewide bid for governor in 2016 and 2020 when Donald Trump also won the state. He boasts a long political career in North Carolina, having served in the state Legislature and as attorney general for 16 years.
“Roy Cooper’s decision to run in the Senate race was just a massive coup nationally and in North Carolina,” Hildebrand said.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has thrown its weight behind Cooper.
“Governor Cooper’s strong leadership, enthusiastic support across North Carolina, and unmatched electoral record will power his campaign to victory, and he will flip North Carolina’s Senate seat,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer and DSCC Chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in a statement Tuesday evening.
They cast Whatley as out of touch from North Carolina voters: “Whatley is a political insider and lobbyist who spent his career doing the bidding of big corporations, while North Carolina has paid the price.”
Republicans have already begun targeting Cooper over crime and immigration, saying he failed to curb unauthorized immigration during his time as governor. Jesse Hunt, a Republican strategist who worked on Richard Burr’s Senate campaign, said Republicans will also link Cooper to the wider Democratic Party’s immigration stances.
“He is the best recruit that Democrats have landed in North Carolina in nearly a decade. Anyone involved in the Senate has to be aware of that strength. But the vulnerabilities exist for Whatley to execute an effective campaign and ultimately win.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has already begun to point out such vulnerabilities.
“While Michael Whatley will fight alongside President Trump in the U.S. Senate to put violent criminals behind bars and keep North Carolina safe, Roy Cooper puts criminals like Iryna Zarutska’s killer first,” said Nick Puglia, a NRSC spokesperson. “Cooper’s incompetent hurricane recovery and support for higher taxes, soft-on-crime policies, and biological males in women’s sports are out of step with working families.”
Tillis decided last year to not seek reelection after sparring with Trump, including over policies in the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Republicans coalesced behind Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chair who is expected to be more closely aligned with Trump. He received the endorsement of Trump and the NRSC early in his race.
“Republicans are united and now the real campaign begins,” Whatley said in a statement Tuesday night. “This election is a clear choice. Voters will choose between an agenda that supports and prioritizes the working families of North Carolina and law-abiding citizens, or Roy Cooper’s agenda that prioritizes the desires of radical political activists ahead of public safety and affordability for working families.”
Whatley has never run for public office but has worked in the Department of Energy, on Capitol Hill and for the Republican National Committee during his more than two-decade political career. He was named state party chair in 2019.
Most recently, Trump tapped Whatley to serve on a task force considering changes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The president made him “recovery czar” for Western North Carolina’s Hurricane Helene cleanup efforts, and Democrats used the title to repeatedly blame him for the slow and frustrating recovery process.
Most voters in North Carolina are unaffiliated, and Democrats are hoping that Whatley’s allegiance to Trump will sway those voters toward Cooper.
Whatley’s “lockstep association with a deeply unpopular president might get him through a primary but might become an albatross in a general election in which many voters, especially independent voters, have soured on the president,” Hildebrand said.
Republicans say that those voters skew to the right, especially in federal elections. The deciding factor among these voters will be whether they want Sen. Chuck Schumer to lead the chamber, Hunt said.
“Unaffiliated voters are going to be really concerned about electing a candidate who’s going to go and rubber stamp everything this radical Democrat Senate conference wants to do if they were able to regain power,” Hunt said. “There’s a lot of voters in that state who are very supportive of President Trump and Whatley needs those voters to turn out.”
This article has been updated with a comment from the DSCC.
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