(The Center Square) – America’s most expensive U.S. Senate race in history is set following Wednesday’s official filing by North Carolina Democrat Roy Cooper.
Republican Michael Whatley turned in paperwork a day earlier. Postures, credits and blame for the plight of North Carolinians began in the summer with their announced intentions to succeed Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis.
The Super Tuesday primary Whatley will face is March 3, and the general election is Nov. 3. Elizabeth Temple and Don Brown thus far are the other candidates from the Grand Old Party; Cooper is the lone Democrat.
North Carolinians this year will choose a U.S. senator, all 14 U.S. House representatives, one state Supreme Court judge and three appellate justices. All 170 seats in the General Assembly – 50 in the Senate, 120 in the House of Representatives – are also on the ballot. There are no statewide referenda.
Only presidential cycle years have longer ballots for the more than 7.6 million voters in the nation’s ninth largest state.
Through late September, Federal Election Commission filings have contributions at $14.5 million for Cooper and $5.8 million for Whatley. Spending is projected to top $500 million and could escalate to as much as $800 million or $1 billion.
Cooper’s lead in polling over Whatley was 47.3%-39.1% in the most recent released Nov. 13 by the Carolina Journal in conjunction with Harper Polling. The former governor (two terms) and attorney general (four terms) has never lost a statewide race and has another seven election wins tied to his time in the General Assembly.
Whatley is endorsed by two-term Republican President Donald Trump. In a bid to reclaim the White House, Whatley was Trump’s pick to lead the Republican National Committee after a successful stint leading the North Carolina Republican Party.
Cooper’s campaign website says he “led North Carolina to be one of the fastest-growing states in the nation with a good quality of life, a strong education system, more health care coverage, and better-paying jobs. The state was named the best state for business three of the past four years.”
His critics say proper credit for the growth and business ranking resides with the Republican majorities of the General Assembly since 2010. Cooper called the state’s public education a “state of emergency” in his final years as governor, in part because he disliked the Legislature’s successful implementation of universal school choice for K-12.
Whatley worked in the Department of Energy for the George W. Bush administration; was chief of staff for former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C.; and in the first Trump administration was part of the teams for presidential transition on energy, the environment and agriculture.
Whatley’s campaign says he’s focused on job creation, better wages, lower costs for families and keeping communities safe.
The campaigns of the candidates have hammered at the other on failed efforts in hurricane recovery – Cooper as governor with the embattled North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency after Hurricanes Matthew (2016) and Florence (2018), Whatley as a Trump choice of “recovery czar” for Hurricane Helene (2024) and a position on his creation of a Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council.
Republicans in statewide races for this decade – 2020, 2022 and 2024 – are 32-10 against Democrats, a party with significantly declining voter registrations for more than 20 consecutive years.
Republicans are 5-for-5 in U.S. Senate races since losing to the late Kay Hagan in 2008. Democrats chase back to 1998 for the last time winning a Senate seat at the midterms.
