I don't claim to be terribly smart, maybe it was just obvious. When Thom Tillis, a long-standing US Senator from North Carolina announced that he was not seeking another term and would retire, I predicted that two candidates from NC would enter the race and that it would get dirty very fast. Well, the dirt hasn't entered the picture unless you live in NC just yet, but it will. Other than that the two candidates I predicted would run, are running and will likely get their party's nomination as well.
On the right we have Roy Cooper, the ex-governor of North Carolina and on the left we have Michael Whatley, with a special emphasis on the "what?"
I'm just happy that the Republicans aren't putting forward someone completely ridiculous for the position. Many years ago when there was an empty Congressional seat they pushed a NASCAR driver forward that even if you don't like the sport, you might recognize.
Let's see if you can guess which one of these people is the former NASCAR driver. Yep! You got it right! That is Richard Petty and that campaign was just idiotic especially if you ever had the misfortune of listening to Richard talk: he was just an idiot with a hat and a penchant for going fast in a racecar.
Back to the matter at hand though. This Senate seat and the people whose district it is in tend to be conservative, so the Republicans are at an advantage here but there is a slight problem. Michael Whatley is an unknown to most people and just looks and sounds sleazy. I know it is isn't nice to judge on appearances but seriously, if we were going to cast someone for a role that required someone to look like as spineless, self-serving jerk in an action movie - he would look like this guy.
When the media comes along and tries to present unflattering images to the public to make Whatley look bad, it won't be difficult for them to do so.
He does have an extensive background in politics going all the way back to working closely with George W Bush and has held many different unelected positions with various high-ranking politicians. He was elected as the chairperson of the RNC in 2022 and well, that's all he's done. I would imagine that he did a good enough job and he is a lawyer as well, but to me these positions of his are pretty easy to look at and say "yep, most of this is nepotism and insider appointments." Is that true? I have no idea because until this year I never heard of the dude - but it will be spun to look that way, I guarantee it.
On the other side, the Dem side, we have Roy Cooper. While I never vote Democrat I have to say that Cooper was the governor of North Carolina from 2017 to 2025 and most conservatives, like myself, didn't really have a problem with him.
Now a great deal of this might have to do with the fact that Cooper was being held hostage by his position and realizing that the state that he was the governor of, was only allowing him to continue in his position because he never did anything terribly crazy and ultra-liberal.
I commonly reference how when Covid nuttiness was at its apex that Cooper made executive order this and that in lockstep with most of the rest of the country. However, when the deeply conservative eastern portion of the state self-determined that they were not going to follow these edicts, Cooper stood down and did nothing other than say "yall are gonna regret this." Then when nothing bad happened to all of us dumb rednecks in the east, the issue just kind of went away. Michael Whatley might be able to use this as a case of some sort of accusation of mismanagement on Roy Cooper's part but if someone is intelligent they would be able to look at what Cooper did and say that he was just doing what almost every other governor was doing at the time. That's enough about that - I have zero desire to turn this into a stupid Covid-handling debate.
The main problem that the Republicans are going to face is that unless they get out there and try to find the information, almost everyone has no idea who Whatley is while all of us know who the guy who only recently stopped being governor of the state is.
in a recent survey it was found that only 17% of people had a favorable opinion of Michael Whatley but this isn't because people don't like Whatley, it is because nearly 50% of people surveyed didn't have any idea who he was.
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for crissakes Mike, stand up straight, the cameras are here!
Whatley does have one important piece of silverware in his cabinet though, Trump really like him and has endorsed him. Whatley apparently has had Trump's back from the start but I'm not going to dig into if that is true or not because I don't really care. I think we can plan on the media mostly going after Trump to try to make Whatley look bad because even though Trump won NC in 2016, 2020, and 2024, it wasn't by huge margins.
This will end up being one of the most nutso elections in 2026. Some pundits are already saying that the total amount of money spent on both candidates could end up approaching a BILLION dollars. That's the real insanity right there and if you ever needed proof of political corruption, there you have it.