North Carolina: Roy Cooper and Michael Whatley win primaries to set up Senate contest | North Carolina
North Carolina’s competitive Senate race took shape Tuesday as former Democratic governor Roy Cooper and former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley won their respective primaries.
Cooper, a former two-term governor, is seen among North Carolina Democrats as their best chance to flip the Republican-controlled seat held by retired U.S. senator Thom Tillis, who has fiercely opposed the Trump administration on health care, defense and the Epstein dossier revelations.
For Republicans, Michael Whatley, also the former state GOP chair and supported by Donald Trump, was leading the field. votingHe is in single digits with his closest rival, representative Don Brown.
Polls for the head-to-head matchup between Cooper and Whatley show Cooper with a 10-point lead. This reflects Cooper’s longstanding relationship with North Carolina voters and a sharply negative disposition toward the president among those voters.
A. questionnaire A poll commissioned by Change Research last month found that 50 percent of North Carolina voters strongly disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president, while nearly 60 percent believe their income is falling behind the cost of living and three-quarters say inflation and rising costs are stressing them out.
In Beaufort County, North Carolina, voters on Tuesday consistently brought up affordability and the economy. While her husband has expressed concerns about immigration and LGBTQ+ issues, Lisa Grubbs, a registered Republican, said her biggest concerns are health care and affordability.
“I think they [the federal government] “They could have done something a little different with some of the things they cut, like Medicaid,” he said. “There are people on fixed incomes. There are just people passing by. “Living prices are increasing, but incomes are not.”
Kelly Burke, an independent voter who voted in the Democratic primary, said the economy is her primary concern.
“The economic issues become very severe because we’re dealing with a fixed income. That’s the biggest thing for me,” he said. “Second, the instability and fragility we have in this divided political climate. The unpredictability of the current situation is untenable. We look forward to the midterms and the next three years.” [of Trump’s term] to pass.”
A Democrat hasn’t won a Senate race in the often-contested North Carolina since 2008, but national GOP campaign strategists said Cooper is making it harder to hold the seat.
Cooper has not lost a North Carolina election dating back to when he first ran for the state House in the mid-1980s. But Democrats haven’t always been able to translate their success in state government into winning federal offices in this divided state.
Some on the right have expressed concern about Trump’s endorsement of Whatley.
“The President made a terrible mistake in forcing Whatley on us,” Brant Clifton said. Daily HaymakerA conservative news site in North Carolina.
Clifton said Whatley has been closely linked to Tillis over the years, which has tarnished him among voters where Tillis has become unpopular.
He said: “Trump spends a lot of time talking about what a bad asshole Tillis is and expressing his anger at Tillis, but there he is. He’s running the RNC to shove Mike Whatley down our throats, but Tom Tillis and his wife are responsible for elevating Whatley from obscurity to chairman of the state Republican party.”
In other elections in the state Tuesday, many North Carolina voters had their options constrained by mid-decade redistricting that widened the partisan advantage in many House seats to reduce the likelihood of Democratic gains.
Incumbent Democratic representative Don Davis, first elected in 2022, represents a district that has been majority Black and safely Democratic for decades. Legislators redrew the district in 2025 to include significantly more Republican voters. Analysts believe the district is now tilted toward Republicans due to historic voting patterns. Five Republican candidates are running in the primary on Tuesday.
North Carolina’s fourth district in the Research Triangle is overwhelmingly Democratic; The primary will likely determine the winner in November. That seat has turned into a nationalized primary battle between incumbent Valerie Foushee and Durham county commissioner Nida Allam, who sees herself as the more progressive choice.
It was one of the most expensive primaries this year, with outside groups spending more than $4 million on the contest. The American Priorities Super Pac spent more than half a million dollars to emphasize Allam’s opposition to military aid to Israel; Article One Pac, whose donors are affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), spent nearly $600,000 supporting Foushee. Political groups affiliated with the AI industry also supported Foushee, messaging about “sensible AI regulation.”
Associated Press contributed reporting
