# Michael Whatley

# Michael Whatley

Michael David Whatley (born October 1, 1968) is an American attorney and [Republican Party](/organizations/republican-party) official. He chaired the North Carolina Republican Party and then the [Republican National Committee](/organizations/republican-national-committee), and he is the Republican nominee for the [United States Senate](/organizations/united-states-senate) from North Carolina in the November 2026 election.

He was born in Michigan. On October 7, 1968, the *Lansing State Journal* announced the birth, six days earlier, of Michael David to Robert W. Whatley and his wife. His picture appears in the 1983 East Lansing High School yearbook as a freshman, and the first Watauga High School yearbook photograph of him is with the sophomore class in 1984, after the family had moved to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, where he lived for roughly three years before college. His Senate campaign has said he graduated from Watauga High School, earned degrees from the [University of North Carolina](/organizations/university-of-north-carolina) at Charlotte and Wake Forest University, and lives in Gaston County. A 2017 congressional witness biography states that he holds a bachelor's degree in history from UNC Charlotte, a master's degree in religion from Wake Forest, and a law degree and a master's degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame.

Before the party chairmanships, that biography lists work as a law clerk to Senior U.S. District Judge Robert D. Potter in the Western District of North Carolina, counsel to the Senate Republican Conference, principal deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Energy, staff director and chief counsel of the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change and Nuclear Safety, and chief of staff to Senator [Elizabeth Dole](/people/elizabeth-dole). He was later a partner at HBW Resources, a Houston consulting firm, and executive vice president of the Consumer Energy Alliance. Reporting in 2025 described more than a decade of lobbying for oil and natural gas companies and their allies, including a role in launching the alliance, an oil-backed advocacy group whose record Democrats have used against him in the Senate race.

At the national committee's March 2024 meeting in Houston, Whatley, then the North Carolina party chair and the committee's general counsel, was elected to succeed Ronna McDaniel, with Lara Trump as co-chair. He told members the committee would concentrate on turning out voters and "protecting the ballot," and he thanked [Donald Trump](/people/mig-donald-trump). On August 22, 2025, at the committee's summer meeting in Atlanta, Florida state senator Joe Gruters, its treasurer, was elected chair without opposition after Trump endorsed him to replace Whatley, who had stepped down to run for the Senate once [Tillis](/people/thom-tillis) decided to retire.

Whatley formally announced that candidacy on July 31, 2025, citing what he called Trump's "complete and total endorsement," in the same week Cooper entered the race for Tillis's seat. Trump had recruited him for the contest, which national reporters have treated as central to control of the Senate. [Associated Press](/organizations/associated-press) race calls on March 3, 2026, gave Whatley and Cooper their parties' nominations in a race NPR described as a toss-up. On the trail he has called himself a "son" of western North Carolina who "grew up" in Blowing Rock, a line NBC News found he had used in some variation at least 15 times since the announcement; the same report placed most of his childhood in Michigan, and his campaign said the Blowing Rock years were formative and that the description was not a contradiction.

## Early life and education

Michael David Whatley was born on October 1, 1968, in Michigan. An NBC News review of local records found that the *Lansing State Journal*, in Lansing, announced on October 7, 1968, the birth six days earlier of a son, Michael David, to Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. Whatley.

He spent most of his childhood in Michigan. His picture appears in the 1983 yearbook of East Lansing High School, in East Lansing, as a freshman. The family then moved to Blowing Rock, in Watauga County. He first appears in the Watauga High School yearbook as a member of the sophomore class in 1984, and NBC concluded from those yearbooks that he lived in Blowing Rock for roughly three years before going elsewhere in North Carolina for college. His Senate campaign says he graduated from Watauga High School.

His earliest reported political work came that same year. In a 2024 profile he said that, as a Watauga High student in 1984, he volunteered for Republican U.S. senator Jesse Helms in Helms's reelection race against Democratic governor [Jim Hunt](/people/jim-hunt), and he called that his first taste of politics. The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, writing when he became Republican National Committee chair, described him as active in politics for 40 years, beginning with volunteer roles in high school.

Whatley has often described those high-school years as his childhood. After he launched his 2026 Senate campaign, NBC found at least 15 uses of having "grown up" in Blowing Rock, including a December 2025 remark to commentator [Mark Levin](/people/mark-levin)—"We have one stoplight and a Hardee's"—and a Spectrum News comment that he delivered newspapers there. His campaign biography says, "I was raised in Blowing Rock and am the son of an accountant and a librarian," and does not mention Michigan. In a September 2025 interview he called it "a tiny little town on the Blue Ridge Parkway" where "there were 534 people," and described church, sports, a golf-course job, restaurant work, and a first full-time job at 14. That profile reported that his father was a certified public accountant and his mother the town librarian. The Census Bureau's place counts list 1,337 residents in Blowing Rock in 1980 and a revised 1,263 in 1990. NBC reported that he has avoided saying he was born in North Carolina, though he did not correct a 2024 radio host who called him a "North Carolina native." Spokesman DJ Griffin said the Blowing Rock years were when Whatley "became an adult," and that calling himself a "son" of western North Carolina did not contradict the record.

He earned a bachelor's degree in history from UNC Charlotte in 1991; the university identifies him as a member of the class of 1991. He then received a master's degree in religion from Wake Forest University in 1993. *The Assembly* reported that his roughly 90-page thesis concerned the Roman Empire's occupation of Palestine just before and after the time of Jesus, and that he wrote that "religious and political power were intertwined and inseparable." Asked why he studied so much religion, he said it had "always been very important" to him, that he "grew up in the church," and that he saw religion as a way to understand how to help a community.

At the University of Notre Dame, the May 18, 1997, commencement program lists Michael D. Whatley, of Blowing Rock, among the recipients of a law degree. UNC Charlotte states that he also earned a master's degree in theology from Notre Dame. He has said he paid for college and graduate school in North Carolina by "working two, three jobs at a time."

## Government service

### Law clerk and the 2000 campaign

After receiving a law degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1997, Michael Whatley clerked in Charlotte for Robert D. Potter, a senior judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. Potter, nominated by President [Ronald Reagan](/people/ronald-reagan), was commissioned in 1981, was chief judge from 1984 to 1991, and took senior status on May 1, 1994, remaining on the court until his death in 2009. Whatley has placed the clerkship before his government work in Washington, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte lists it among his early posts.

He then joined the 2000 presidential campaign of [George W. Bush](/people/george-w-bush). A biographical note he used as an energy advocate calls him a senior policy coordinator and counsel to the Bush-Cheney campaign and transition teams, and counsel to the Senate Republican Conference. The conference title, but not the campaign title, also appears in a résumé filed with 2017 House testimony. North Carolina reporting describes the election dispute more narrowly. WRAL wrote that he worked as a legal adviser on the Bush campaign, helping with the recount in Florida, and *The News & Observer* wrote that he served on Bush’s Florida recount team. A 2014 *Capital Times* profile called him a senior policy adviser on that campaign and transition. None of those accounts describes a courtroom role for him in the litigation that ended the recount.

*A punch-card ballot is examined during the 2000 presidential recount in Florida.*

Senate disbursements compiled by LegiStorm show Whatley drawing a congressional salary from October 1, 2000, through January 15, 2001, after Election Day and into the first days of the Bush administration. The public entries do not name the office, so the pay record does not by itself confirm the conference-counsel title.

### Department of Energy and Senate staff

Whatley next worked at the [United States Department of Energy](/organizations/united-states-department-of-energy). BallotReady lists him as principal deputy assistant secretary from 2001 to 2003, the title on his 2017 disclosure; UNC Charlotte calls him a senior department official under Bush. Schedules the department later released, for the chief of staff’s calendar in March and June 2001, repeatedly list “Whatley, Michael” as lead staff on congressional work, with headquarters extension 6-5450. On March 12–15 he is the listed lead for Senate energy-hearing preparation, including a hearing on the California energy situation, and for meetings with Senator [Mitch McConnell](/people/mitch-mcconnell) on the Paducah site, Senator [Mike Crapo](/people/mike-crapo) on an Idaho laboratory budget and nuclear programs marked “INEEL,” and Representative John Dingell. June entries put him on science-hearing preparation and on legislative-strategy meetings that also included [Dan Brouillette](/people/dan-brouillette). The calendars do not print the principal-deputy title.

He was back on Senate payroll in 2003. Records for Senator George Voinovich of Ohio list him as a subcommittee staff director from January 27 to March 2, 2003, and as a legislative aide on August 11–13, 2003, and from December 1, 2003, to January 14, 2004. His 2017 disclosure calls the job staff director and chief counsel of the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change and Nuclear Safety, under the Committee on Environment and Public Works. In early 2003 that committee’s chairman was Senator [Jim Inhofe](/people/jim-inhofe) and its majority staff director was [Andrew Wheeler](/people/andrew-r-wheeler); an April 1 nominations hearing print does not name Whatley.

On January 15, 2004, Senator Elizabeth Dole’s office began paying him as chief of staff. Frank H. Hill, already in that job, stayed on the same report as chief of staff through January 31, so the titles overlap for about two weeks. Whatley remains chief of staff through September 30, 2004, and then through January 2, 2005, when Gregory J. Gross takes the title the next day. *The News & Observer* has written that Dole chose him in 2004 and that he then moved into energy advocacy.

## Energy consulting and advocacy

After his federal posts, Michael Whatley spent more than a decade in energy lobbying. In 2005 he launched the Patriot Group, representing utilities including DTE Energy, American Electric Power, and Xcel Energy on [air-pollution](/drivers/air-pollution) issues, and in 2007 he became a partner at O’Connor & Hannan. He then became a partner at HBW Resources, a Houston-based public-policy firm, and executive vice president of the Consumer Energy Alliance, a nonprofit HBW says it built and manages. He resigned the alliance post in June 2019, when he became chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, and remained an HBW partner until 2022. A 2017 trade report described him, while he still held both jobs, as a member of Donald Trump’s presidential transition team on energy and climate change.

### HBW Resources

The Center for Public Integrity reported that David Holt formed HBW in 2008 with Whatley, a former chief of staff to Senator Elizabeth Dole, and Andrew Browning, who had worked at the United States Department of Energy. Whatley signed federal lobbying registrations as a partner from January 2009, with Houston listed as the firm’s principal place of business. E&E News has called HBW oil- and gas-focused. Clients registered while he was a partner included the American Petroleum Institute, the Consumer Energy Alliance, the Center for North American Energy Security, Noble Energy, General Electric, the National Ocean Policy Coalition, the Association of Energy Service Companies, and, in 2018, BP America.

A 2009 API filing covered development of domestic oil-shale reserves, with Browning as lobbyist and Whatley as contact. Whatley was the listed lobbyist for the Center for North American Energy Security on policy for unconventional fuels, including heavy oil, oil sands, and oil shale. He signed a 2016 registration for the Association of Energy Service Companies on federal-lands development and [Environmental Protection Agency](/organizations/environmental-protection-agency) rules for upstream production; the named lobbyist was colleague Michael Zehr, also listed on the 2018 BP America filing.

### Consumer Energy Alliance

The alliance is a Houston 501(c)(4) recognized by the IRS in September 2008; donations are not deductible, and donors need not be named. HBW says it built CEA “from the ground up” and has claimed about 550,000 individual members and nearly 300 companies.

CPI found that revenue rose from $737,000 to $3.8 million and then stayed above $3 million, that more than $1 million a year was paid to HBW as a management fee, and that CEA’s staff were almost entirely HBW employees. Holt, CEA’s president and an HBW managing partner, said members came largely from “consuming” sectors and that all members contributed, but he would not disclose amounts. For 2011 and 2012, at least 30 percent of receipts came from the American Petroleum Institute, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and America’s Natural Gas Alliance. E&E News reported support from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Statoil.

Under Whatley, E&E reported, the alliance backed the Keystone XL pipeline, opposed rules on water pollution, fracking, power-plant emissions, and vehicle efficiency, and promoted offshore drilling, including a 2018 plan covering most U.S. coasts and waters off North Carolina. Weeks after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, Whatley, through the Southeast Energy Alliance, another HBW-managed group, asked the Interior Department to open the mid-Atlantic, and wrote in the *Richmond Times-Dispatch* that planned Gulf rules were a “long-term de facto moratorium.”

CPI found that HBW and CEA carried out much of the work of the Outer Continental Shelf Governors Coalition, formed in 2011 and later chaired by North Carolina Governor [Pat McCrory](/people/pat-mccrory), which lobbied the [Barack Obama](/people/barack-obama) administration to expand offshore leasing. An HBW official prepared talking points for a February 2014 meeting with Interior Secretary [Sally Jewell](/people/sally-jewell), including Shell’s concerns, and the coalition’s site mentioned CEA’s administrative role only after CPI inquired. Holt said the governors had asked for the help and that both groups supported renewable as well as fossil energy; a researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy, which CPI described as a liberal group, said the arrangement instead gave large polluters access under a nonprofit’s name.

*Mother Jones*, drawing on 2011 *Salon* reporting, described Whatley’s emails with Canadian diplomat Gary Mar about a “grassroots operation” against state low-carbon fuel standards, followed by an advertising campaign of about $1 million against a federal standard. In 2016 CEA submitted hundreds of form letters to the [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission](/organizations/federal-energy-regulatory-commission) for the Nexus gas pipeline. The *Toledo Blade* reported that some people named, including a man who had died in 1998, said they had not agreed; CEA called the mistakes unintentional. He left CEA effective June 10, 2019, writing that the party post was political while the alliance was nonpartisan; CEA said the resignation preserved that status. The Energy and Policy Institute and other critics have called CEA a “front group.”

## North Carolina Republican Party

### Election as chair

Delegates at the North Carolina Republican Party convention in Concord elected Michael Whatley chairman on June 8, 2019, for a two-year term. He replaced [Robin Hayes](/people/robin-hayes), a former congressman who had dropped a reelection bid citing his health and who was indicted that April, with insurance executive Greg Lindberg and two associates, in an alleged scheme to bribe state Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey. Hayes was also charged with lying to the FBI. He later pleaded guilty to that false-statement charge. The party did not censure him, and in January 2021 Donald Trump pardoned him.

The chair race was a three-way contest. Whatley, a Gaston County energy consultant who had helped organize Trump’s 2016 North Carolina rallies, ran on a “Reset in Raleigh” theme against former Lee County commissioner Jim Womack, a 2017 challenger to Hayes, and party general counsel [John Lewis](/people/john-lewis). Whatley took more than half the weighted vote, Womack about 45 percent, and Lewis about 4 percent. Former House speaker [Newt Gingrich](/people/newt-gingrich) endorsed him before the vote, and Miriam Chu of Moore County was elected vice chair. Executive director Dallas Woodhouse left as his contract ended.

### Elections and party direction

Whatley was reelected without opposition at the June 2021 convention in Greenville, which Trump keynoted. A district chair said it was the first time in twenty years he had seen a state chairman chosen by unanimous consent. Hours before speaking, Trump credited Whatley and the state party with a North Carolina result he described as free of the fraud he alleged elsewhere. Susan Mills of Cumberland County narrowly defeated Sherry Lynn Womack for vice chair.

*Donald Trump speaks at the North Carolina Republican Party convention in Greenville on June 5, 2021.*

In 2020 Trump carried the state’s electoral votes—by 1.3 percentage points, the Associated Press later noted—and Senator Thom Tillis won reelection. Republicans also won open [Council of State](/organizations/council-of-state) offices, including lieutenant governor, swept the statewide judicial races, and added legislative seats. The closest contest was for chief justice. After canvasses, Democrat Cheri Beasley trailed Republican Paul Newby by 416 votes; a machine recount left Newby ahead by 401 votes out of nearly 5.4 million cast. A sample hand recount did not change the result, Beasley conceded, and the State Board of Elections certified Newby on December 18, 2020.

In April 2021 Whatley hired Jason Simmons, Trump’s 2016 state director and a former Republican National Committee regional political director, as executive director. In 2022, Trump-backed [Ted Budd](/people/ted-budd) defeated Beasley for the Senate seat [Richard Burr](/people/richard-burr) was leaving. Republicans won a 30-seat veto-proof majority in the state Senate but took 71 House seats, one short of the 72 needed to override Democratic Governor [Roy Cooper](/people/roy-cooper) on their own, and won both Supreme Court seats on the ballot.

At the June 2023 Greensboro convention—nearly 2,000 delegates, with Trump, [Mike Pence](/people/mike-pence), and Ron DeSantis speaking—Whatley defeated John Kane Jr., 62 percent to 38 percent. On June 10, delegates censured Tillis for “blatant violations of our party platform,” citing his work on same-sex marriage, immigration, and guns. Spokesman Daniel Keylin said Tillis would not apologize for tax cuts, border and school-safety bills, or religious-liberty measures. Former Governor Pat McCrory and former vice chairman Wayne King called the censure a poor signal in a swing state; state Representative Mark Brody said the party should set a standard rather than “appeal to everybody.” The vote could not remove Tillis from office.

Whatley resigned on March 26, 2024, after his election as RNC chairman. The executive committee elected Simmons over Womack, 289 to 130, through June 2025. Trump endorsed Simmons, who named carrying the state for Trump, electing Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson governor, and holding legislative and appellate majorities as the party’s aims.

### Election administration

After the [2020 presidential election](/facts/2020-united-states-presidential-election), Whatley described counts in Democratic cities elsewhere as fraudulent while treating North Carolina’s as sound. In late November 2020 he said on local radio that “there was massive fraud” in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia, echoed claims that Republican observers were barred from counting sites in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and called litigation “really the plan.” A CNN review found no evidence of massive fraud in those cities; the post-election lawsuits failed, and Attorney General [William Barr](/people/william-barr) said the Justice Department had not seen fraud on a scale that would have changed the outcome. Whatley later told CNN that pandemic changes to absentee voting had weakened safeguards and that voting should be “easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

He condemned the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack but told NPR that the people who entered the building, not Trump, bore responsibility, and that “we certainly saw evidence” of irregularities—after the interviewer noted that every state had certified its results and courts had rejected the challenges. In February 2021 he said he had cast an electoral vote for Trump but that [Joe Biden](/people/env-person-joe-biden) was legitimately elected. He also said most of those arrested were “not necessarily Republican voters”; later investigations found they were largely Trump supporters.

On February 15, 2021, the central committee unanimously censured Burr, one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump, saying impeachment of a former president lay outside the Constitution. Burr called it “truly a sad day” and said leadership had “chosen loyalty to one man” over the party’s principles. Tillis, who voted to acquit, said Burr had voted his conscience. Whatley told NPR the objection was the conviction vote after Burr had called the trial unconstitutional.

At the 2021 convention he announced an election-integrity committee, led by former state senator Buck Newton, to monitor election boards, propose rule changes, and recruit observers. He said the party had “led the nation” in 2020 in protecting the vote. Delegates Mike Urben, Andrae DeHaan, and Aryn Schloemer sued in 2023, alleging that a mobile app used for the chair vote took ballots off the convention floor, over the internet, and without paper records, contrary to party rules and to standards Whatley had set out. The suit also said the convention adjourned without a vice-chair election, leaving Mills in place. Whatley said the party was unified. Judge Claire Hill dismissed the case in September 2023 for lack of standing and failure to state a claim; the plaintiffs dropped their appeal in January 2024.

## Republican National Committee

### General counsel

Whatley first sought a national party office at the Republican National Committee winter meeting in January 2023, running for co-chair with an endorsement from Donald Trump. He lost. Drew McKissick of South Carolina was elected co-chair.

On February 28, 2023, chair Ronna McDaniel named him general counsel, replacing Kyle Hupfer, who also chaired the Indiana Republican Party. Whatley remained chair of the North Carolina Republican Party. McDaniel said he would bring "election integrity expertise" and that she wanted to expand the committee's "lawfare efforts" to make Joe Biden a one-term president. Whatley called the post an honor and said he would work to "win big in 2024."

In the job he oversaw the committee's litigation and the program it called election integrity. A CNN review of his comments after the 2020 election found that he had promoted false claims about the result and supported court efforts to overturn it, though he later acknowledged Biden as the legitimate president. The Associated Press reported the same split in his interviews: weeks after the election he said there had been "massive fraud," while in 2021 he said Biden "absolutely" had been legitimately elected.

### Chairmanship and the 2024 elections

On March 8, 2024, at the spring meeting in Houston, members elected Whatley chair and Lara Trump, Trump's daughter-in-law, co-chair. The Associated Press reported that Whatley won by unanimous voice vote as Trump installed his team while closing in on the nomination. Whatley said the committee would be "the vanguard of a movement" working to elect Trump. Lara Trump, whose role was expected to center on fundraising and media, held up a $100,000 contribution check and declined to name the donor. Chris LaCivita, one of Trump's two lead campaign advisers, became the committee's chief of staff while keeping his campaign post.

Trump endorsed both on February 12, and LaCivita, already a campaign co-manager, was tapped at the same time to be chief operating officer. McDaniel, installed by Trump in 2017 and reelected to a fourth term in January 2023, was under pressure from Trump and allies who blamed her for recent losses and fundraising. In her Houston farewell she told members to stop attacking other Republicans and to reach swing voters. McKissick left with her. Joe Gruters, then Florida's national committeeman, and McKissick had both been discussed as possible chairs before Trump chose Whatley. Nikki Haley's campaign called the shuffle "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" and said the committee was "effectively bankrupt."

The change revived whether RNC money would pay Trump's legal bills. LaCivita said "not a penny" of committee or campaign funds had gone or would go to those fees, and a nonbinding resolution by Mississippi committeeman Henry Barbour to forbid it died without support from members in ten states. The committee had paid some [New York](/organizations/new-york) legal bills until McDaniel said in November 2022 that payments would stop once Trump was a candidate again.

Within days the new leadership fired more than 60 people, including senior political, data, and communications staff and workers at outreach centers aimed at Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American voters. In a March 14 memo obtained by NPR, Whatley said the centers were not closing and described a joint operation with the [Trump campaign](/organizations/trump-campaign): James Blair as political director of both, and Charlie Spies as RNC chief counsel. He wrote that "every tool that the other side has used, we need to wield for ourselves," including early voting, mail ballots, and ballot collection where legal, plus a "Grow the Vote" program for voters who were not usual Republicans. The memo named Christina Bobb senior counsel for election integrity and Bill McGinley outside counsel, and said the committee would challenge identification and signature rules from 2020 so that it would be "easy to vote and hard to cheat."

NBC News reported that by late October the RNC had filed more than 100 lawsuits of its own, with some wins on absentee-ballot rules and other procedures, in what an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer called a more planned effort than in 2020. A campaign source told NBC a consent decree that had limited Republican "ballot security" work no longer applied. NBC also reported that Bobb, by then an RNC employee, had been charged in Arizona over an alleged 2020 elector scheme and had pleaded not guilty.

On November 5, 2024, Trump defeated [Vice President Kamala Harris](/people/kamala-harris). The National Archives recorded 312 electoral votes for Trump and 226 for Harris. State returns compiled by the [Federal Election Commission](/organizations/federal-election-commission) show 77,302,580 votes for Trump (49.80 percent) and 75,017,613 for Harris (48.32 percent). The Associated Press reported that Republicans won a 53–47 Senate majority and kept a 220–215 House majority.

On January 17, 2025, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., members reelected Whatley without opposition. Lara Trump had resigned as co-chair the month before; KC Crosbie, a Kentucky committeewoman and former treasurer, was elected in her place, also unopposed. Whatley called the presidential result "the greatest political comeback in American history."

He left the chair at the summer meeting in Atlanta on August 22, 2025, to run for the United States Senate in North Carolina after Senator Thom Tillis declined to run again. That day the committee elected Gruters, a Florida state senator and the RNC treasurer, who was unopposed after Trump endorsed him. Whatley said Trump had endorsed both his Senate campaign and Gruters. Through July, NBC News reported, filings showed the RNC with $84 million cash on hand, against $14 million for the [Democratic National Committee](/organizations/democratic-national-committee).

## 2026 United States Senate campaign

### Candidacy and Republican primary

On June 29, 2025, Republican senator Thom Tillis said he would not seek a third term from North Carolina, a day after he and one other Republican senator voted against advancing President Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending bill over proposed Medicaid cuts. Trump had threatened a primary challenge. Tillis called another campaign “not a hard choice,” saying leaders willing to compromise were an “endangered species” and that he wanted time with his family.

Former governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat undefeated in statewide races, announced on July 28 in a video that he would run, saying he had “thought on it and prayed about it” and that the middle class felt like “a distant dream.” On July 31, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley, who had never held elected office, opened his campaign in Gastonia, where he lives. Trump had posted a “complete and total endorsement” the previous week. Whatley said he would fight for “a strong economy, safe communities” and that “President Trump deserves an ally.” Senate majority leader [John Thune](/people/john-thune), the Senate Leadership Fund, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee endorsed him at the launch. Don Brown, a former congressional candidate, and Andy Nilsson said they would stay in; Brown said many Republicans would treat Whatley as an establishment candidate.

The primary was March 3, 2026. The Republican ballot listed Whatley, Donald M. (Don) Brown, Thomas Johnson, Michele Morrow, Elizabeth A. Temple, Richard Dansie, and Margot Dupre. In the State Board of Elections precinct file dated April 16, Whatley had 405,140 votes (64.6 percent) of 627,404; Brown 97,891 (15.6 percent); Johnson 35,534 (5.7 percent); Morrow 35,065 (5.6 percent); Temple 23,892 (3.8 percent); Dansie 14,996 (2.4 percent); and Dupre 14,886 (2.4 percent). Cooper took 761,345 votes (92.0 percent) of 827,755 against five other Democrats, the next being Justin E. Dues with 22,295 (2.7 percent). On March 25 the board certified state and local contests but delayed the U.S. Senate and six House districts because 16 provisional ballots for voters on a “Registration Repair” list had not been counted under a Justice Department consent judgment. It said those votes could not change outcomes and set the federal canvass for April.

### General-election campaign

Election day is November 3, 2026; as of September 26 the election had not been held. The board’s September 21 candidate list names Cooper (filed December 3, 2025), Whatley (filed December 2), Shannon W. Bray of the [Libertarian Party](/organizations/libertarian-party) (filed December 17, 2025), and Michael Dublin of the [Green Party](/organizations/green-party) (filed June 15, 2026). The Cook Political Report shifted the seat from Toss-up to Lean Democratic on April 13, 2026, with a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R. Its public note says Cooper had “been in the driver’s seat,” that at least one Republican super PAC had started cutting ad time, and that North Carolina races often tighten.

*President Donald Trump speaks at a September 16, 2026, campaign rally for Michael Whatley at Gastonia Municipal Airport.*

On September 16, Trump spoke for about an hour in Gastonia after arriving on the tarmac. He called Cooper an extreme liberal who had made cities “blood-soaked killing fields,” and called Whatley “the guy you want.” Whatley said Trump was “fighting for the people of North Carolina.” Trump criticized Cooper on Hurricane Helene, then said he would withhold further relief unless Whatley won, before adding that he was joking; Governor [Josh Stein](/people/josh-stein) called that “no way to campaign” and pressed a $10 billion state request. Trump told the crowd to “pretend I’m on the ticket.”

A Senate Leadership Fund ad uses Stephen Federico, whose daughter was murdered in a 2025 South Carolina home invasion, and says Cooper “let 3,500 criminals out on the street; 18 of them were murders.” FactCheck.org reported that the man charged was released in South Carolina and was not among prisoners covered by a 2021 North Carolina settlement. That settlement followed an [American Civil Liberties Union](/organizations/american-civil-liberties-union) suit during the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic): Cooper had resisted releases, a judge issued a preliminary injunction, and the state then agreed to release about 3,500 people. The super PAC did not answer FactCheck.org; a Cooper spokesperson called the ad false. At the rally Trump likened the ads to the 1988 “Willie Horton” commercial and tied Cooper to DeCarlos Brown, charged in the Charlotte killing of Iryna Zarutska; WRAL reported that Cooper did not release Brown, and Cooper’s campaign called the tactic “shameful.”

Cooper’s campaign has cited Harvey L. West Jr., who pleaded guilty in 2000 to taking indecent liberties with a child and later held party posts. PolitiFact found the district committee, not Whatley, elected West 1st Congressional District chairman in 2019. West said Whatley later appointed him to the Plan of Organization Committee in 2021 and 2024; a party spokesman did not dispute that and said West had already been serving. Whatley’s campaign did not comment, and West resigned the district chair in mid-March 2026. Cooper’s campaign also said a pastor convicted of crimes against children introduced Whatley at an event and accused Whatley of elevating “convicted child sex predators.”

Popular Information contrasted a truck-driving Whatley ad, with more than $1.5 million in spending by an AdImpact estimate, with filings showing $104,749.73 since September 2025 to N5YD LLC for a Cessna it linked to Carl Andrew “Drew” Boggs, sentenced in 2015 for defrauding the Transportation Department and pardoned by Trump in 2021, plus $31,247.46 to Old Well Aviation LLC. The campaign did not comment.

### Fundraising, advertising, and polling

Through June 30, 2026, the latest quarterly totals then on the Federal Election Commission site, Cooper’s authorized committee reported $34,975,789 in receipts, $14,258,222 in disbursements, and $20,717,567 cash on hand. Whatley’s committees reported $11,272,504 in receipts, $7,810,806 spent, $3,461,698 on hand, and $46,928 in debts. Receipts include transfers from joint fundraising committees, about $19.8 million for Cooper and $4.6 million for Whatley. Through October 14, 2026, in their pre-general-election reports, Cooper’s committee reported $49,585,341 in receipts and $9,088,860 cash on hand, and Whatley’s $13,668,468 in receipts and $902,238 on hand. NC Newsline reported about $8 million in second-quarter receipts for Cooper and close to $3 million for Whatley, and said Whatley’s campaign did not comment. Manager Jeff Allen said 95 percent of donations to Cooper’s campaign and joint committee were $100 or less, and cited a Supreme Court ruling allowing the national party to spend “virtually unlimited amounts.”

On April 6, Senate Leadership Fund announced an initial $71 million program for Whatley through Election Day. A June AdImpact count cited by NC Newsline put fall reservations at about $38 million for that fund and $27 million for Democratic-aligned WinSenate. On September 22 the Carolina Journal, citing AdImpact, reported that Old North Action had canceled $6.5 million in October reservations while keeping $14.5 million, and that Senate Leadership Fund had shifted $900,000 from broadcast to a $400,000 digital add, leaving about $23.2 million reserved; the fund called the change routine.

September surveys still had Cooper ahead by varying margins. A High Point University online poll of 706 likely voters, taken September 6–16, found Cooper at 50 percent, Whatley at 42 percent, another candidate at 3 percent, and 5 percent unsure, with a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.9 points because the Dynata panel is not a probability sample. Before the Gastonia rally, WRAL cited an Elon University likely-voter poll with Cooper up 11 points and an East Carolina University poll with an 8-point lead.

## Political positions

Whatley's positions are documented in three roles: energy advocacy before he chaired the North Carolina Republican Party; election work as that chair and then as chair of the Republican National Committee; and the 2026 campaign for the United States Senate seat Thom Tillis is leaving in North Carolina.

### Energy and the environment

As executive vice president of the Consumer Energy Alliance — launched in 2009 by his firm HBW Resources, largely with the same staff, and backed by major oil companies — Whatley argued for more production. The group supported the Keystone XL project on the Keystone Pipeline system, opposed rules on water pollution, hydraulic fracturing, power-plant emissions, and auto efficiency, and pushed offshore drilling, including a post-Deepwater Horizon request to open the mid-Atlantic. In 2010 he called planned new rules a "long-term de facto moratorium," and he later backed Donald Trump's 2018 plan to lease nearly all U.S. coasts, including waters off North Carolina.

A 2013 alliance essay called Barack Obama's Climate Action Plan a "mixed bag" of executive action. Whatley warned that Environmental Protection Agency carbon standards would threaten coal, then over 40 percent of generation, and raise electricity costs, while treating a renewable-power goal and faster transmission permits as useful. He left the alliance in 2019 and HBW in 2022. Roy Cooper opposed offshore leasing after 2017, and a 2018 High Point University poll found 53 percent of residents against drilling near the coast and 37 percent in favor. Whatley's campaign did not tell E&E News whether he still held those views. In a Spectrum News interview he said he had fought "for lower energy prices for consumers," Trump's endorsement said he would "Champion American Energy DOMINANCE," and state Democrats have called him a "Big Oil lobbyist."

### Elections, economy, and public safety

After the 2020 election, Whatley said there was "massive fraud" in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia and that Republican observers were barred in Michigan and Pennsylvania. CNN found no evidence of massive fraud in those cities. Trump's side lost more than 60 cases, and Attorney General William Barr and Republican election officials reported no outcome-changing fraud. Whatley called the court strategy "really the plan." In February 2021 he said Joe Biden was "legitimately" elected. He condemned the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack but said most of those arrested "were not necessarily Republican voters," which later investigations did not support. In 2024 he said pandemic mail-voting changes had weakened safeguards and that voting should be "easy to vote and hard to cheat," a formulation the *New York Times* quoted when he became RNC chair. The committee then sued over rolls and mail ballots; a federal judge dismissed its Michigan roll suit in October 2024 for lack of standing.

In the Senate race he has promoted the tipped-income deduction in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, saying voters "want to take home more money," and said Cooper would have voted against that law. Cooper's campaign answered that Whatley had backed higher premiums and electricity costs. On immigration he promised a Border Patrol union leader the laws and funding to continue Trump's approach, which WRAL reported he would keep after Trump leaves office. He attacked Cooper's three vetoes of bills requiring sheriffs to honor Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers. Cooper called the bills unconstitutional and a transfer of federal duties to sheriffs. As RNC chair, Whatley urged Republicans to oppose a 2024 bipartisan border bill Cooper supported. Whatley has blamed immigrants for opioid deaths. U.S. Sentencing Commission figures cited by WRAL show about 86 percent of fentanyl-trafficking convictions from 2019 to 2023 were of U.S. citizens. Both candidates have said people accused of violent crimes who are in the country illegally should be removed.

On crime, Whatley has said he would not have signed a February 2021 settlement that allowed early release of 3,500 state inmates during a pandemic lawsuit Cooper's administration had contested. In September 2025 he wrote that Cooper "bears direct responsibility" for the killing of Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte train because of a 2020 criminal-justice task force. PolitiFact rated that False: suspect DeCarlos Brown Jr. had finished an armed-robbery sentence before the task force suggested cashless bail for some misdemeanors, and those ideas were not shown to have caused his later releases. A WRAL review found that a majority of people later accused of homicide, and described as early releases, were already free or would have left on their original dates.

## Personal life

Michael Whatley lives in Gastonia, in Gaston County, North Carolina, with his wife, Suzanne. *The News & Observer* reported in 2025, during his United States Senate campaign, that the couple have three college-age children. His campaign biography, and a March 2026 *Daily Tar Heel* profile, name twin sons, Michael and George, who attend Clemson University and North Carolina State University, and a daughter, Mary Kate, who attends the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A candidate disclosure he filed on August 13, 2026, lists assets of Whatley, his spouse, and dependent children, including Gastonia accounts identified with Michael Jr., George, and Mary, and a joint Gastonia savings account valued at $500,001 to $1 million.

Whatley and his family attend St. Mark's [Episcopal Church](/organizations/episcopal-church) in Gastonia, a parish of the Episcopal Church. In a 2023 interview he said he was the church's treasurer and had previously been senior warden on the vestry; as of August 2025 the parish donations page listed him as stewardship chair, and a September 2020 church post showed him delivering the message at a service. The rector, the Rev. Shawn Griffith, gave a nonpartisan invocation at Whatley's campaign launch in Gastonia on July 31, 2025. St. Mark's describes itself as a progressive parish whose members volunteer on hunger, homelessness, and racism. Whatley told *The Assembly* in 2024 that he grew up in the church and understood religion as a way to help a community.

Court records reviewed by NC Newsline in April 2026, matched to Whatley's name, birth year, and residences, covered 14 traffic cases in North Carolina and Virginia from 1989 to 2023. He failed to appear in four North Carolina cases and was found guilty in absentia in four Virginia cases. Aside from a 1998 expired-registration citation that a court disposed of and a 2007 uninspected-vehicle citation that was dismissed, he pleaded guilty or responsible, or was found guilty in his absence. In June 2015, about two weeks after he pleaded to a lesser charge in Caldwell County for driving 65 mph in a 50 mph zone, Rutherford County charged him with speeding 64 mph in a 45 mph zone, a misdemeanor. After he missed court, two orders for his arrest were issued, on bonds of $500 and $1,000, and were not served. He appeared in January 2016 after hiring a lawyer, the arrest order was recalled, and he later accepted responsibility for a faulty speedometer and paid a $258 fine.

In 2023, while he was general counsel of the Republican National Committee, a state trooper cited him in Martin County for 68 mph in a 55 mph zone on U.S. 64 near Jamesville, in a GMC Sierra; the notes said he did not know his speed and thought the limit was 65, and he missed court dates that June and July. Newsline reported citations in seven North Carolina counties and four Virginia counties, and $912 in fines since 2015. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/michael-whatley