At CPAC, Whatley pledges loyalty to Trump and uses Zarutska killing to attack Cooper
A vote for North Carolina’s U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley is a vote for President Donald Trump’s agenda.
That is the message Whatley gave Thursday afternoon to an audience at CPAC USA 2026 in Texas.
Whatley, a Republican, spoke on stage for 13 minutes in a sit-down with Jim McLaughlin, a CPAC board member. McLaughlin told their audience that Whatley’s race may be one of the most important in the country.
CPAC, or the Conservative Political Action Conference, annually brings together activists, candidates and lawmakers with matching ideologies. Whatley was among various speakers to talk at the four-day event that also included North Carolinian evangelist Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham.
State of the race
Whatley, 56, the former Republican National Committee chairman, is facing off against former Gov. Roy Cooper, 68, a Democrat, to succeed Sen. Thom Tillis in office.
Tillis, a Republican, chose not to seek reelection last summer after sparring publicly with Trump over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the negative effect it would have on North Carolina’s Medicaid coverage.
Polling shows North Carolina voters favor Cooper over Whatley, though it also shows that many don’t yet know who Whatley is. A poll from Carolina Journal, a conservative outlet, came out just before Whatley took the stage Thursday and showed Cooper up by eight points.
A Cooper win would be a pickup for Democrats — a seat the party hasn’t held since the beginning of 2015. And with a narrow Republican majority in both chambers, all eyes are on swing states like North Carolina.
Republican messaging
On stage, Whatley began listing states like Maine, Ohio, Texas, Iowa, Kentucky and Michigan.
“Every single one of these battleground states; the Republicans are running on an American First message,” Whatley told the crowd. “We’re running on President Trump’s agenda.”
Whatley touched on some of his own visions for North Carolina: creating an economy that works better for North Carolinians, making sure children and communities are kept safe, and ensuring that “North Carolina is going to be the tip of the spear” for “keeping American interests and our allies safe,” with the military personnel based in the state.
“The Democrats — who ran in ‘24 — their agenda was open borders, inflationary spending and a woke, weak America,” Whatley said. “They are doubling down on that in every single House race and every single Senate race across the country right now. They are doubling down on stupid, and the voters are not going to go there.”
Whatley’s speech came amid rising gas prices and the Trump administration’s deployment of troops from Fort Bragg to the Middle East as part of the Iran War.
Criticising Cooper
He took a moment to attack the 2024 campaigns of Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger and New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill, two women who became their states’ first Democratic female governors this year.
Then he turned his focus onto Cooper.
“And Roy Cooper is an absolutely card-carrying member of the woke mob, and he’s going to portray himself as a moderate,” Whatley said. “He’s going to tell you that he wants to work across the aisle.”
He criticized Cooper’s vetoes against Republican legislation throughout his gubernatorial terms and for being soft on crime.
Soft on crime
Cooper has faced an onslaught of criticism from Republicans after they publicized a list of inmates who were released under court order during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the names listed was DeCarlos Brown, a man who was sentenced to six years in prison for armed robbery.
Brown had finished his sentence before the settlement, but his name was included retroactively under the agreement terms for 3,500 people to be released.
Brown is now facing first-degree murder charges in the August death of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, who fled to Charlotte from her war-torn country.
“He took that list, he hid it under court order, he sealed it, and he promised the people of North Carolina none of these are violent criminals,” Whatley said.
Whatley said Zarutska’s “blood is on Roy Cooper’s hands.”
“We need to do better in North Carolina,” Whatley said. “We need to make sure that we have a champion for the conservative cause. We need to make sure that we have an ally for Donald Trump in the United States Senate. That’s what I’m going to be when I beat Roy Cooper and permanently end his career.”
Cooper’s team responded by saying the attacks on Cooper are false .
“Roy Cooper is the only candidate who spent his career prosecuting violent criminals and cracking down on child sex predators as attorney general, and signing tough on crime laws and stricter pretrial release bail policy as a governor,” a Cooper campaign spokesperson said.
This story was originally published March 26, 2026 at 6:58 PM.
