Democrat Roy Cooper is projected to win North Carolina’s open Senate seat in his race against Republican Michael Whatley.
Perhaps the most surprising element of the race was the lack of surprise in the ordinarily competitive state. Cooper, a popular former governor, pulled away from Whatley in polling and fundraising. As a result, national GOP attention shifted toward defending incumbents in states like Kansas and South Carolina.
Cooper’s win marks the first time a Democrat has won a North Carolina Senate seat since Kay Hagan’s 2008 victory, which was also the last time the state voted for a Democrat for president. Cooper will replace outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis, who publicly broke with Trump after deciding not to run for reelection. As elections become increasingly nationalized, North Carolina will become one of only a handful of states with one Democratic and one Republican senator.
Whatley was seeking elected office for the first time. He previously served as chair of the North Carolina Republican Party but is best known for his time as chair of the Republican National Committee. President Donald Trump and his allies aggressively pushed Whatley to run for the open Senate seat.
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“I have a mission for my friends in North Carolina, and that is to get Michael Whatley to run for the U.S. Senate,” Trump posted on Truth Social days before Whatley formally joined the race. “HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
Tillis endorsed Whatley but recently told Politico that “we needed probably a more moderate type of profile.”
Whatley spent his campaign touting Trump’s support. In the final months of the campaign, other Republican candidates grew more comfortable breaking with the president on immigration, the Iran war and the economy. Whatley, though, stuck close to Trump.
The situation looked so grim for Whatley that his campaign paused its airing of TV ads for two weeks in October.
Mid-October FEC filings show the Republican candidate raised just $13.7 million during the two-year election cycle, while Cooper raised nearly that much money in just the three-month period from July to September — and $47.2 million overall for the cycle.
That ultimately eased the path for Cooper, who ran an affordability-focused agenda and traveled the state on a “Make stuff cost less” tour. Cooper most recently served two terms as governor after a decades-long career in state electoral politics.
Cooper previously outperformed Democrats at the top of the ticket, winning gubernatorial elections in 2016 and 2020 even as the state voted for Trump in both elections.
As governor, Cooper set a record for the most vetoes in the state as he battled with the Republican-controlled state legislature. He focused on Medicaid expansion and public school funding, and he’s likely to deliver a reliable party-line vote for Democrats.
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