Why Senate candidate Don Brown predicts he can beat better-known NC rivals
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Don Brown, retired Navy JAG and author, challenges Whatley and Cooper in 2026 race.
- Brown cites Hegseth nomination conflict and Tillis' role as catalyst for his bid.
- He vows debt cuts, a two-thirds federal workforce cut and opposes mandates.
Since July, two names have emerged as the frontrunners for North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race: former Gov. Roy Cooper and former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley.
But one of Whatley’s opponents in the GOP primary, Don Brown, isn’t convinced.
“We’re going to take Whatley down, and we’re going to take Cooper down too,” Brown told McClatchy in an exclusive interview.
Who is Don Brown?
Brown, 65, of Charlotte, is a retired U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General officer and the author of 13 published books.
He grew up in Plymouth, an hour northeast of Greenville.
“I come from the poorest county in North Carolina,” Brown said in the mid-January interview. “I know poverty. But I will tell you it was a blessing because I can relate to anybody and I have a heart for people that struggle and don’t have what others have.”
He spent much of his time with his grandparents. One grandmother he describes as a prayer warrior. His grandfather worked at the pulp mill in Plymouth, and his other grandparents lived down the road in Jamesville where they grew tobacco and soy.
“I learned my work ethic from my grandparents,” Brown said. “I learned spiritual values from them. I learned that it doesn’t take money to be able to achieve; and so I would say that’s where I learned most of my initial core values.”
Brown graduated from Plymouth High School — now Washington County High School — before going to school at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he studied political science. It was there he decided to become a naval officer.
“I grew up fishing on the Albemarle Sound,” Brown said. “I was around boats and fishing all my life.”
He attended Campbell Law School’s JAG program and became a naval JAG officer — a military attorney.
That work inspired his career writing military fiction and nonfiction, including his book, “Call Sign Extortion 17: The Shoot-Down of SEAL Team Six,” which was later turned into a documentary. Extortion 17 was a U.S. Chinook military helicopter shot down over Afghanistan in 2011, killing 38 people and a dog named Bart. It was the single greatest loss of American life during the Afghan war.
Brown told McClatchy that his work on that book led to his interactions with Pete Hegseth, now the secretary — which in turn led to his campaign for the Senate.
Opposing Tillis
In January, just days after President Donald Trump began his second term in office, he nominated Hegseth, a Fox News host and former CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, to lead the Pentagon.
Tillis, who is serving in his second term in the Senate, had said he would support any of Trump’s nominees who made it out of their committees of jurisdiction with a favorable report.
But then news broke that Tillis was working behind the scenes against Hegseth.
“He goes into the Armed Services committees, he comes out and Tillis tries to torpedo the nomination by grabbing an affidavit or something from Hegseth’s former sister-in-law,” Brown said. “It did not succeed. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Brown had run for Congress in 2024 but was defeated in a Republican primary by Mark Harris who ultimately won the 9th district seat. Brown said several people were approaching him about running against Tillis, but that he wasn’t taking them seriously.
That is, until Tillis tried to stop Hegseth’s nomination. Brown then registered with the Federal Election Commission to run for U.S. Senate.
Tillis retreats
Meanwhile, Tillis said publicly that he did his due diligence behind the scenes and that Hegseth had satisfied his concerns. Tillis became the vote needed to pass Hegseth’s confirmation out of the Senate.
Tillis would later acknowledge, in an interview with CNN, regretting that decision after he said Hegseth failed to communicate with the White House his decision to stop a weapon shipment to Ukraine. He said Hegseth was “out of his depth” to lead the Pentagon.
For many months, it was Tillis versus Brown in the 2026 Republican primary.
But in June, Tillis had a public sparring match with Trump over Medicaid coverage for North Carolinians and announced he would drop out of the race.
Trump immediately announced his endorsement of Whatley to run in Tillis’ place.
“We knew Tillis was going to lose,” Brown said. “Even in the first few months on the campaign trail, because I’ve been all over the state, we’ve seen the reaction of state Republicans. Whatley is not much better, so I’m feeling pretty good about this.”
Polling in the Senate race
Whatley and Cooper announced their entrances into the U.S. Senate race in rapid succession and were quickly considered the frontrunners.
Cooper has to make it through the March primary against five Democrats, though no one else is as well known as the former governor.
Whatley and Brown are facing off against four other candidates, including Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee for state superintendent of schools in 2024.
Whatley polls ahead of his Republican challengers, including in a poll by Carolina Forward last month that showed Whatley at 36% and Brown, the next highest performer, at 6%.
But it’s not necessarily clear from polls who would do better against Cooper. In 12 polls tracked by The New York Times since November, Cooper has polled ahead of Republicans by 1 to 24 points. In a Carolina Journal poll conducted in November, Cooper outperformed Whatley 47%-39%, while Cooper outperformed Brown 48%-38%.
“I feel like we have a very winnable race, and we intend to win it,” Brown said.
What Brown wants to do in Washington
If Brown does win both the primary and the general, his colleagues in the Senate should not expect him to play nice.
“I’m going to, probably, not be the most popular rookie in the US Senate,” Brown said. “But I’m going to carry the torch, I’m a fighter, and I’m going to go up there and hold their feet to the fire”
Among the things Brown wants to accomplish in the Senate is to cut the national debt and ensure there are no mask mandates or vaccine requirements, which he describes as matters of medical freedom.
“The Republican Party needs a plan to tackle the national debt,” Brown said, adding that he’s not criticizing Trump on this issue, but Congress. “Congress has the power under the Constitution for taxing and spending, the power of the purse, and they just put their heads in the sand.”
Brown said his method to tackle this debt is a two-thirds reduction of all nonmilitary, federal employees within 10 years. He hopes to do much of this largely through attrition by retirements.
Brown supports Trump, though he said he believes that some of the advice the president has received on endorsements have been ill-advised. But he said when it comes to Trump’s policies, some have been “Mount Rushmore-like.”
“I’m going to use my position, as the U.S. senator, as a bully pulpit to hit the issues over and over and over again,” Brown said. “I won’t back down.”
This story was originally published February 9, 2026 at 12:39 PM.
