Hey, everybody! Meet Mike from Michigan.
You ought to be able to trust – at least – someone’s bio. Where they’re from. Where they graduated from. Their wife’s name. How many kids they have.
I’m old enough to remember when Uncle Thom got just a little too cute with ID-ing his alma mater.
Michael Whatley is running to replace Uncle Thom in the US Senate. It’s no secret that Uncle Thom has been his political patron — his rabbi, if you will.
It appears Whatley may have been trying to be too cute with the details of his bio, as well. Juuuuuust like his Uncle Thom:
Standing next to President Donald Trump after Hurricane Helene devastated North Carolina in 2024, Michael Whatley wanted those watching the storm briefing to know how affected he was by the disaster, saying he had deep roots in the region.
“As a son of western North Carolina, I was in Watauga County with Samaritan’s Purse recently and got a chance to see the devastation that all of these communities have hit,” said Whatley, who was then chair of the Republican National Committee and the Trump administration’s “recovery czar.
Whatley is now running for Senate against Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s former Democratic governor. And on the campaign trail, his ties to the region are a central part of his political DNA. He frequently talks about how he “grew up” in the tiny town of Blowing Rock in western North Carolina. An NBC News review found that Whatley has used some variation of that line at least 15 times since he announced his Senate run in July.
“I grew up in a tiny, little town in North Carolina called Blowing Rock,” Whatley told conservative commentator Mark Levin in December. “We have one stoplight and a Hardee’s. You know, I went to church and I played sports and I worked.” […]
I first heard him mention Blowing Rock during the Senate campaign. (I’ve been paying close attention to him since he first came on the state political scene in 2019.).
You see, I have a connection to that town as well. My family has vacationed there for decades. We’ve owned property there and summered there for years. (Country music star Eric Church lives there, btw.) But I’ve yet to come across any locals – or other year round residents – who could tell me anything about Whatley ever being there. Like Pinehurst, it’s a small town that gets a lot of tourists every year. Local folks tend to at least know of each other.
Blowing Rock is a fantastic place. If I had roots there, I’d be boasting about them to anyone who would listen. From the description he gave Mark Levin, it’s pretty clear that Whatley has not been to Blowing Rock in a looooooooong time.
But here comes what really threw me for a loop – A MICHIGAN CONNECTION:
[…] But records show that Whatley spent most of his childhood away from North Carolina. He was born in Michigan and stayed there until his early high school years. He then lived in Blowing Rock for roughly three years before going elsewhere in the state for college.
On Oct. 7, 1968, the Lansing State Journal ran a short announcement on the birth six days earlier of a baby, Michael David, to Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. Whatley.
Whatley’s picture appears in the 1983 East Lansing High School yearbook, when he was a freshman. The first time his picture appears in the Watauga High School yearbook, the school he attended while living in Blowing Rock, was as a member of the sophomore class in 1984. […]
That’s Lansing, Michigan. Home to Michigan State University.
Okay. So he lived in Blowing Rock for 10th through 12th grade and then took off. Is that honestly *growing up*?
Hold on. There’s MORE:
[…] Whatley’s campaign spokesperson said that the brief period of time he lived in Blowing Rock was formative for him, and there is no contradiction when he calls himself a “son” of the region.
“Michael Whatley moved to Blowing Rock, graduated from Watauga High School, earned degrees from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Wake Forest University, and today is a proud resident of Gaston County,” said DJ Griffin, his campaign’s communications director.
He added that Whatley “became an adult” in western North Carolina.
It’s a different sentiment than Whatley uses regularly on the political stump.
His own campaign website says he was “raised in Blowing Rock” and makes no mention of his Michigan roots. […]
As I said, I have followed Whatley closely since 2019. Until this article, I have neither seen nor heard of a personal connection between Mike Whatley and the state of Michigan.
MORE:
[…] In August, Whatley told Spectrum News that he “grew up in Blowing Rock, and, you know, delivered newspapers.” That same month he repeated the line, telling a conservative radio host, “I grew up in Blowing Rock, and I played sports, and I went to church.”
In September, he told The Talk Station, “I am a kid who grew up in Blowing Rock.” And in January, he told the “Agriculture in North Carolina” podcast that he “grew up in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, obviously a very small town.”[…]
I realize we have a lot of people in our state who are not born-and-raised here. People these days are much more transient than ever.
As part of a military family, I did my share of moving while growing up. My parents are North Carolina natives and I was born here, as well, while my folks were home visiting family. It’s easy to say where I was born. I tell people that I *grew up* “all over.” (Which is true.)
Pat McCrory was born in Ohio. His campaign was pretty honest with that. His father brought the family to Greensboro when he was 10 years old. And the rest is history.
You could say McCrory – as a 10 year old newbie to the state — grew up here. I don’t know if you could say the same for someone who moved here in time to start the 10th grade.
MORE:
[…] Whatley has been careful not to say that he was born there, according to interviews reviewed by NBC News. He has, however, not always corrected others when they say so.
During an Election Day radio interview in 2024, a local host referred to Whatley, who at the time was RNC chair, as a “North Carolina native” to start the interview. It went unchecked as the two went on to discuss Trump’s presidential campaign.
Even though he didn’t spend his childhood in the state, Whatley does have long-held ties to North Carolina both personally and politically.
He received two degrees from North Carolina universities. After a stint in President George W. Bush’s Energy Department, he became the chief of staff to former North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole and in 2019 became the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party.
That résumé has largely been de-emphasized on the campaign trail, replaced instead by the idea he was raised in North Carolina as he runs in a nationally watched Senate race against Cooper, who has a sizable lead according to public polling released Tuesday by Catawba College-YouGov.[…]
