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EXCLUSIVE: GASTONIA, N.C. — Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Michael Whatley made it official Thursday, announcing his bid for a GOP-held Senate seat in battleground North Carolina.
Whatley’s campaign launch, at an event in his hometown of Gastonia, North Carolina, comes a week after President Donald Trump endorsed Whatley and urged him to run.
“President Trump deserves an ally, and North Carolina deserves a strong conservative voice in the Senate,” Whatley emphasized as he spoke to a crowd of family, friends and supporters. “I will be that voice.”
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The move by the RNC chair also comes four days after Democrats landed their top Senate recruit of the 2026 cycle to date. Former two-term Gov. Roy Cooper declared his candidacy in the race to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.
And in an exclusive national interview with Fox News Digital minutes later, Whatley highlighted that “this midterm election cycle is going to be absolutely huge, and North Carolina is going to be the marquee Senate race in the country. And I’m absolutely thrilled that President Trump has asked me to run in this race.”
Cooper’s campaign launch bolsters the Democrats’ chances of flipping a key GOP-held seat as they try to take a big bite out of the Republicans’ 53–47 Senate majority.
And beating Cooper, who has won statewide six times — four times as attorney general and twice as governor — won’t be easy.
But Whatley, in his speech, took aim at Cooper, tying the former governor to far-left figures in the Democratic Party, including New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who is part of the party’s Senate leadership.
“Roy Cooper may pretend to be different from the radical extremists that run today’s Democrat Party, but he is all in on their agenda,” Whatley said in his speech.
And Whatley told Fox News Digital, “You just have to take a look at his record. … We are going to call him out on his record. These are not just wild suppositions that we’re going to make.”
The showdown in North Carolina between Whatley and Cooper is expected to be one of the most competitive and expensive Senate battles in the country.
And Cooper raised a record-breaking $3.4 million in the first 24 hours of his campaign.
“We will be the most expensive Senate race in the history of the country,” Whatley told Fox News. “But, look, we will be able to raise the resources we need to tell our story, and we are going to work all 100 counties here across North Carolina to be able to tell our story.
“It’s a story about how Republicans win in North Carolina. We listen to the voters. We understand the issues that they care about, and we put solutions on a table,” Whatley added. “That’s how the Republican Party has won the Senate races in North Carolina since 2008. And that’s how Donald Trump won three times in a row in this state.”
Whatley, a North Carolina native, served as the state’s GOP chair for five years before Trump picked him in March 2024 to serve as RNC chair.
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Trump called Tillis’ announcement in June that he wouldn’t seek a third six-year term in the Senate “great news.”
Tillis is a GOP critic of the president, and Trump torched the senator last month for not supporting his “big, beautiful” spending and tax cut bill.
After Tillis’ announcement, Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, was at the top of the president’s list for the open seat in the Tar Heel State.
But, recently, Lara Trump, a North Carolina native who served as RNC co-chair alongside Whatley in 2024, announced that “after much consideration and heartfelt discussions with my family, friends, and supporters, I have decided not to pursue the United States Senate seat in North Carolina at this time.”
Democrats took aim at Whatley in advance of his campaign launch.
“Now, Whatley is heading back to North Carolina to sell Trump’s budget betrayal that took health care away from more than 650,000 North Carolinians and spiked costs for working families,” Democratic National Committee communications director Rosemary Boeglin argued in a statement.
“Trump and Whatley’s toxic agenda will hang around Whatley like an albatross.”
And as Whatley announced his candidacy, the Cooper campaign blasted him.
“Michael Whatley is a D.C. insider and big oil lobbyist who supports policies that are ripping health care away from North Carolinians and raising costs for middle-class families,” Cooper campaign manager Jeff Allen charged.
“North Carolinians don’t need a lobbyist as their senator, and voters will have a clear choice between Whatley’s long career as a Beltway insider against Roy Cooper’s record of putting partisanship aside to get results for North Carolina.”
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