Michael Whatley enters the Northern Carolina Senate race after Trump approval

EXCLUSIVE: Gastonia, NC – The President of the National Republican Committee (RNC), Michael Whatley, officials it on Thursday, announcing his candidacy for a siege of the Senate held by the GOP in the battlefield of North Carolina.

The launch of the Whatley campaign, during an event in her hometown of Gastonia, in North Carolina, comes a week after the president Donald Trump approved Whatley and urged her to run.

“President Trump deserves an ally, and the North Carolina deserves a strong conservative voice in the Senate,” said Whatley speaking to a crowd of family, friends and supporters. “I will be that voice.”

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The decision of the President of the RNC also comes four days after the Democrats won their recruit from the 2026 cycle Senate to date. The former governor of two mandates, Roy Cooper, said his candidacy in the race to succeed the Republican retired senator Thom Tillis.

And in an exclusive national interview with Fox News Digital a few minutes later, Whatley stressed that “this mid-term electoral cycle will be absolutely enormous, and North Carolina will be the country’s marquee race in the country. And I am absolutely delighted that President Trump asked me to run in this race.”

The president of the RNC, Michael Whatley, announces his race for the American Senate in North Carolina on July 31, 2025. (Fox News Digital / Paul Steinhauser)

The launch of Cooper’s campaign reinforces the chances of the Democrats to overthrow a key seat of the GOP while they are trying to take a big bite from the majority of the Senate of the Republicans.

And beat Cooper, who won the state six times – four times as a prosecutor general and twice as a governor – will not be easy.

But Whatley, in his speech, targeted Cooper, binding the former governor to distant personalities in the Democratic Party, including the candidate for the town hall of New York, Zohran Mamdani, the representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Jasmine Crockett, and Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who is part of the leadership of the Party Senate.

“Roy Cooper can claim to be different from the radical extremists who direct today’s Democratic Party, but he is completely in their agenda,” said Whatley in his speech.

And Whatley told Fox News Digital: “Just take a look at his file. … We will call him on his file. These are not only wild assumptions that we are going to make.”

The governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, spoke to the National Democratic Convention in August 2024 in Chicago. (Imagn)

The confrontation in North Carolina between Whatley and Cooper should be one of the most competitive and costly battles in the country.

And Cooper collected a record of $ 3.4 million in the first 24 hours of its campaign.

“We will be racing in the most expensive Senate in the history of the country,” Whatley told Fox News. “But, look at, we will be able to raise the resources we need to tell our story, and we will work the 100 counties here in North Carolina to be able to tell our story.

“This is a story about how the Republicans gain in North Carolina. We listen to voters. We understand the problems that hold them to what holds them and we put solutions on a table,” added Whatley. “This is how the Republican Party has won the Senate races in North Carolina since 2008. And this is how Donald Trump has won three times in this state.”

Whatley, originally from North Carolina, was president of the state GOP for five years before Trump chose it in March 2024 to serve as president of the RNC.

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Trump described Tillis’ announcement in June that he would not look for a third year six years in the “Good News” Senate.

Tillis is a criticism of the president’s GOP, and Trump burned down the Senator last month so as not to support his bill on expenditure and tax reductions “great, beautiful”.

The Republican Senator Thom Tillis of Caroline du Nord announced in June that he would not appear for a third term in the Senate when he was re -elected in 2026. (Getty Images)

After Tillis’ announcement, Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, was at the top of the president’s list for the headquarters in Tar Heel’s state.

But, recently, Lara Trump, from Caroline du Nord who was co -president of RNC alongside Whatley in 2024, announced that “after a lot of consideration and sincere discussions with my family, friends and supporters, I decided not to continue the siege of the American Senate in North Carolina at that time.”

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The Democrats targeted Whatley before the launch of his campaign.

“Now Whatey returns to North Carolina to sell Trump’s budgetary betrayal which has removed health care of more than 650,000 Carolinians from the North and increased costs for workers’ families,” said the communications director of the National Democratic Committee, Rosemary Boeglin, in a statement.

“The toxic agenda of Trump and Whatley will drag Whaty like an albatros.”

And while Whatley announced his candidacy, the Cooper campaign has exploded.

“Michael Whatley is an initiate of DC and a large petroleum lobbyist who supports policies that snatch the health care of North Carolinians and increased the costs of middle -class families,” accused Cooper campaign director Jeff Allen.

“Northern Carolinians do not need a lobbyist as a senator, and voters will have a clear choice between Whatley’s long career as Beltway’s initiated against the Roy Cooper record to put aside the partisanry to obtain results for North Carolina.”