Senate candidate Michele Morrow says NC is done electing ‘party power players’

Senate candidate Michele Morrow wants former Gov. Roy Cooper to retire.

For good.

She told McClatchy in an exclusive interview that she’s the only candidate who can make that happen, and that’s why she chose to run for U.S. Senate.

“I’m the only one who can beat him in November,” Morrow said.

Morrow, 54, of Cary, surprised political watchers when she entered the Republican primary race in the final days of candidates’ filing period, even though there had been rumors swirling since at least spring that she was considering it — which drew attention because of her comments before and during previous campaigns attacking LGBTQ+ people and calling for the execution of Democratic leaders.

“I have the trust of the people of North Carolina,” Morrow told McClatchy. “I have been fighting for them and with them for the last 11 years and I think every one of the ... (President Donald) Trump supporters in 2024 is ready for somebody that’s of the people and not of the party.”

Who is Michele Morrow?

Morrow grew up in upstate New York, near Syracuse.

Her parents were high school sweethearts, who grew up 45 minutes from where they raised their family. She spent many weekends with her extended family, including grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

“I had a really great support system; accountability system,” Morrow said.

As a teenager, she moved to Charlotte, where she attended South Mecklenburg High School.

She earned a nursing degree from UNC-Chapel Hill, where she would get a job in the neurosurgical intensive care unit and continue working several years.

But her career would take her to Texas, Mexico and Colorado before she would return again to North Carolina, 11 years ago.

And it was her time in Mexico that inspired her passion for politics.

Immigration and borders

Morrow said she was working in the emergency department of a hospital in Austin, Texas in the mid-1990s when she noticed that many of her patients would come in and not speak English. At the time, she said there was one person on staff who could translate.

“If they were not on duty, it was a big struggle,” Morrow said.

Then her church offered her the opportunity to travel to Mexico for a mission trip.

“I thought, I want to go, and I want to see how it feels to be somewhere that I don’t speak the language,” Morrow said. “It’s easy to get frustrated, but I wanted to see what that feels like.”

Initially the trip was for 12 days, but she learned that single people could serve for 12 months so she extended her trip.

And she met her husband on the trip. They’re currently divorcing and accusing each other of domestic violence, The Assembly previously reported. Morrow’s husband has pleaded guilty to a domestic violence protective order violation, according to court records.

Together they had five children, including three who were born in Mexico City.

“I really got into politics because of what was happening on the border, because we had lived in Mexico and I saw the detriment to an open border from the perspective of the women and children who were being left south of the border, when their boyfriends and husbands would come to the United States,” Morrow said. “They would then just disappear, and they would never contact them again.”

She said she started talking about her concerns regarding open borders from that perspective.

She said she knew women who would receive money, gifts and promises to send for them for the first year or two from men who went into the United States, but then contact would just end.

Families who had paid “coyotes” to smuggle them across the border were then indebted to them for the travel, but couldn’t afford to pay them back. Instead, Morrow said, they would become indentured servants, being trafficked for sex or drugs.

“I just wanted people to understand that us having a safe border and enforcing our laws was actually a compassionate thing to do to people south of the border, and the other side of that in Mexico is not,” Morrow said.

Running for public office

The 2026 election is Morrow’s third campaign.

She spent 16 years homeschooling her children and teaching science, government and Spanish classes to other homeschooled children in a co-op.

From there she decided to run for Wake County Board of Education in 2022 and then for North Carolina’s superintendent of public instruction in 2024.

She lost both previous races, though she won the 2024 Republican primary against the incumbent superintendent.

Morrow has repeated QAnon conspiracy theories, protested outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, made comments critical of Islam and falsely said the “plus” in LGBTQ+ stands for pedophilia. She called for the publicly televised death of President Barack Obama, though later said it was a joke.

Obama even spoke out against her 2024 campaign, saying he was “self-interested.”

Asked in the Feb. 2 interview if there was anything people misunderstood, she wanted to re-characterize or offer any other thoughts about, she said, “A prophet is never respected in their hometown.”

Seeking the Senate

Morrow isn’t facing an incumbent in the 2026 election.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from Huntersville serving in his second term, chose to retire after getting into a public sparring match with Trump over Medicaid coverage for North Carolinians.

Cooper, a Democrat, has the highest name recognition in the race, having served in public office in some capacity since the 1980s. He also led North Carolinians through the COVID-19 pandemic, appearing on television almost daily.

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley has Trump’s endorsement to succeed Tillis and is the only other candidate than Cooper polling in double digits.

“I think North Carolina is done with selecting people that are just party power players that are basically buying their way into an office,” Morrow said. “It’s time for us to put people in that have lived a life of service, and they’re going to continue to do that when they’re in DC.”

Among primary candidates, former Judge Advocate General military attorney and author Don Brown is polling behind Whatley, but just in front of Morrow at 6% and 4% respectively.

Morrow said what sets her apart from those three men, to start, is that she’s not a lawyer.

“The last thing we need is another lawyer,” Morrow said.

Serving North Carolina

But Morrow has been thinking a lot about how her life experiences can serve North Carolina.

“I spent 11 years focused on medical freedom and education reform, as well as border security, because of my past history in Mexico, as well as election integrity,” Morrow said. She’s eager to work on “how we can help with Medicaid, how we can get health care costs down, how we could actually expand quality local, affordable health care to every county here in North Carolina.”

She said she has broad experience because of what she’s done.

“We desperately need people who are problem solvers,” Morrow said, “and common sense, just regular people that have lived life.”

This story was originally published February 9, 2026 at 12:37 PM.

Danielle Battaglia

McClatchy DC

Danielle Battaglia is the congressional impact reporter for The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, leading coverage of the impact of North Carolina’s congressional delegation and the White House. Her career has spanned three North Carolina newsrooms where she has covered crime, courts and local, state and national politics. She has won two McClatchy President’s awards and numerous national and state awards for her work.