The contest is set in a key Senate race in North Carolina, where former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper and former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley won their primaries. NBC News projects.
The North Carolina race will be at the center of this year’s Senate battle as Republicans secure their 53-47 majority. It’s a must-win race for Democrats if they hope to win the four seats they need to control the chamber.
Democrats are hoping Cooper will be a strong candidate after winning gubernatorial races in 2016 and 2020 with President Donald Trump in power. Trump won the state again in 2024, by 3 percent.
Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, a native of North Carolina, ran for the position of Sen. GOP’s Thom Tillis is retiring. So Republicans turned to Whatley, who was the chairman of the Republican National Committee at the time and who had led the North Carolina GOP.
Trump encouraged Whatley to run and endorse his campaign when he launched in late July. And the RNC gave Whatley an early boost by authorizing the national team to use resources to help his campaign, even though he hadn’t won the primary.
Whatley thanked Trump for his support in his victory speech Tuesday night, and framed the race as “a choice between a conservative champion of North Carolina, who will be President Trump’s Senate ally, or a champion of failed policies on the left.”
Whatley, who pledged to Trump early in the race, applauded that endorsement in the run-up to Tuesday’s election, launching a TV ad with Trump calling Whatley “very important that he wins” and that he “stands up for your values.”
Whatley also launched an ad on streaming services ahead of Tuesday’s preliminary hearing, giving a preview of his case against Cooper in the coming months.
The location links Cooper to last year’s stabbing incident on a train, in which 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska was killed. The suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., was serving time in prison for robbery with a deadly weapon. A federal judge indicted him in October.
Whatley’s ad, which features video of the stabbing, also features a narrator slamming Cooper for supporting the “resurrected cash bail agenda,” without a source for that claim, and saying Cooper “has his blood on his hands.”
“The killing of Iryna Zarutska was a heinous crime and it is troubling that Michael Whatley continues to use images of her death in his ads against the wishes of her family,” Cooper campaign spokesman Jordan Monaghan said in a statement to NBC News, referring to a report that Zarutska’s family had asked the public in September to stop sharing the video. “Political candidates must stop lying about this tragedy for political gain but actually work to keep our communities safe.”
“Roy Cooper is the only person who spent his career prosecuting violent criminals and keeping thousands of them in prison as attorney general, and signing tougher criminal laws and tougher bail and pretrial release laws,” Monaghan said.
Cooper, who was the state’s attorney general before becoming governor, signed a bill in 2023 changing bail procedures for violent crimes.
Cooper, meanwhile, has been emphasizing affordability on the campaign trail, and launched a “Make Things Less Affordable” walk after the primary.
“If you want change in Washington, I don’t, this campaign is for you,” Cooper said Tuesday night. “If you want to throw out the insiders in DC, right? This campaign is for you. You know, if you just think things are too expensive, right? This campaign is for you. I’ve never been in a race that’s so important to the people of North Carolina and to our country, and I need all of you to get this job done.”
Cooper has also been building his campaign fund. He had raised $21.1 million and had $14.2 million in his bank account as of Feb. 11, while Whatley collected $6.3 million and had $2.5 million.
