NC’s US Senate race 2026: One big woke, green mess?
Our ticket-topper in November is starting to look like a real lose-lose situation. You think you found a reason to not vote for one of the two major party candidates. But then you learn the other guy has been just as bad.
ESG. That’s short for Environmental, Social, and Governmental. It’s a relatively new system being pushed by leftists to evaluate businesses and individuals. It’s a left-wing replacement for the ol’ credit score we’ve all come to know and love. Under ESG, you or your business will be evaluated under each of the three categories from a clearly left-wing standpoint. If you do not come out as sufficiently leftist, you or your business might not get that loan. You might not get that job.
Here’s what we’ve learned on Cooper:
[…] As part of that effort, Cooper is trying to project an image of himself as the second coming of former West Virginia Senator and conservative Democrat Joe Manchin.
But Cooper’s investments tell a different story: It turns out the Democrat has plowed tons of money into funds managed by ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) investment titans.
Cooper filed an updated personal financial disclosure form (PFD) with the United States Senate on August 13. On that PFD, Cooper discloses between $2,605,039 and $5,876,001 invested with two investment houses: Vanguard and Charles Schwab. Both have prioritized ESG investing heavily in recent years.
None of Cooper’s money sits with explicitly branded ESG funds offered by either Schwab or Vanguard.
Recent years have seen a push from conservatives and traditional investment strategy advocates for divestment from Vanguard funds, specifically, though less so Schwab.
Of Cooper’s total investments, $1,284,013 is held with Vanguard, specifically.
Back in 2023, Cooper vetoed anti-ESG leislation passed by the state legislature.
The North Carolina legislature overrode that veto.
North Carolina Treasurer Dale Folwell called the override a move against “Wacktivism.”
“The best interests of North Carolina taxpayers and retirees will be served through legislative passage of House Bill 750, which requires investment decisions to be made on the basis of the highest financial returns, not social and political ‘wacktivism,'” said Folwell.
“This is a good day in North Carolina. We are grateful to those lawmakers who understand the need to shield the state pension plan against the movement to weaponize public retirement systems to achieve extreme agendas,” Folwell continued.
Cooper disagreed. He holds at least $250,001 in three Vanguard funds: VYM (Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF), VTIAX (Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Admiral Shares), and VTSAX (Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares). None of those are explicitly ESG funds, but they are Vanguard investments. […]
(HBW Resources, the firm Whatley co-founded, has also preached the gospel of ESG .)
We’ve learned from Whatley’s reports that he was apparently lobbying during his tenure as NCGOP chairman AND as RNC chairman. 
Our previous post also revealed a handful of Whatley’s paying clients.
We found a little more detail about these companies and what they do:
[…] And what do those clients do? The short version is: Green energy and decarbonization.
GE Vernova describes itself this way on its corporate website: “At GE Vernova, we are united by a single, urgent, and optimistic mission: electrify to thrive and decarbonize.”
The website adds that in GE Vernova’s view, “The world needs us to accelerate the transition to more reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy.”
Vernova is also heavily invested in providing “data center solutions.”
Centrus is a nuclear energy company (nuclear is a major rival to natural gas; the two branches of the energy sector have been feuding for at least a decade now over everything from how to power data centers to the UAMPS nuclear proposal in Utah).
And the Renewable Fuels Association is the trade association that advocates for ethanol mandates and regulatory subsidies.
Ethanol blending requirements have been a long-favored green energy policy advocated by Democrats, most notably former President Barack Obama and former President Joe Biden, who set them at a very high level during his presidency.
But those mandates are currently being blamed for adding between 20 cents and a dollar to every gallon of gas in North Carolina. Truckers also revile them because they’re driving diesel costs up. […]
Take any GOP candidate this season!
Can it get any worse?
WHEN does the NC GOP wake up or it just simply burns to the ground and we lose every race to libs, dems, socialists and communists?
If we did an analysis on the NC GOP hierarchy as most orgs and businesses annually do, we would find failure after failure and justifying a cleaning out.
Moore County Checking in.
Chair Beddow, his former Vice Chair Bill Demastus, and treasurer Carol Wheldon pointed the MC GOP towards the iceberg, ordered full speed ahead, and are now going down with the ship. They are the Temu version of McConnell, Thune, Liz Cheney, and the like.
They openly violated the party bylaws and very publicly abused their power to retaliate against anyone who had a slightly different view and to favor their personal candidates.
The result has been a lot of great conservatives, volunteers, and activists voted with their feet and left the party..
It is sad, as it didn’t have to be this way.
David Hensley is a breath of fresh air among conservatives in Moore county because he’s not afraid to say what most think.
“Green” has always been about using fear-mongering to line someone’s pocket. It was the George W Bush administration that passed the EISA 2007 law that forced ethanol on us all. To the great pleasure of Republican leaders in corn states like Iowa. In NC we are being covered in ugly, toxic, unreliable solar farms. The only reason they exist is due to the RPS quotas that force utilities to buy this expensive power and pass on the higher costs to consumers. And who profits from their own solar farms and contributions from the solar industry? Cooper and Hudson, for starters. Always follow the money.
Wait until the Morgan Jackson and Roy Cooper machine really kicks in! They are undefeated for a reason. By the time they get done with Whatley, he won’t be able to run for dog catcher, but don’t worry he will go back to green energy lobbying and missing court dates. Maybe he will move back to our shared home state of Michigan!
Perhaps it is time for the NCGOP to burn to the ground and to begin anew. When there are long time conservatives like me telling me they are skipping the Senate race and many in NC1 and NC11 skipping other races, we are in big trouble. Candidate quality matters!
NC House will lose 5 seats and DA Freeman hasn’t even begun on the Bourbon Tour that runs through Jones and Hillsborough Streets.
NC Democrats are running to the middle and it will serve them well in November!
The NCGOP is on life support and without Whatley funding via the RNC and the Berger money laundering operation coming to an end, let’s see if they can make payroll. The balance sheet is terrifying!
North Carolina Democrats are NOT “to the middle”. They are to the far left. All of them want to sell our country out to the illegal aliens and gun controllers.. While I am appalled by Whatley playing footsy with the AOC Green New Deal crowd, Comrade Cooper is SOOOO bad on so many fronts, that we have no real choice at this point but to get out and vote for Whatley. We need to get some competent messaging out of NCGOP on what is at stake in this election. Remember that the chairman of the Democrat Socialists of America has made their objective clear when he declared on video that “our goal is communism”. Also remember that 192 Democrats in Congress refused to vote for a resolution condemning the DSA and socialism. They are all “fellow travellers.”
How does a guy (Cooper) who has not worked in the private sector for 20-30 years amass such a fortune? Not that the business about Whatley and the rest of the NCGOP insiders sticking us with “green energy” garbage is any consolation. And they all run around telling us that they are going to get electric power prices down?
I once read that if you could run around a tree at 986000 miles per second that you stood a reasonable chance of being able to make love to yourself. But if that IS your goal you can achieve it a lot easier by voting for a for a Democrat. With due respect to the IMPORTANCE of the upcoming election that last sentence should be extended to say by voting for a Democrat AND for ANY reason NOT voting for a Republican.
As to my above its the commonsense of we the people vs communism. Pure and simple.
Unfortunately, what you say is not true.
After six years in elected office, I can tell you that it is We The People vs Socialists/Anarchist Democrats vs Corrupt GOP Establishment who are partners with the Democrats.
Like it or not, when Democrats get the majority they immediately go full throttle in implementing what their base elected them for while personally enriching themselves through corruption.
When Republicans get power, they immediately betray their base, side with the Democrats, while personally enriching themselves through corruption.
Don’t believe me?
What actual federal legislation has been passed in the past two years?
– SAVE Act? No
– Codification of DOGE cuts? Not one.
– Recess appointments for Trumps judges? Not one. And that is a historical precedent cut brought to you by the “Republican” senate.
– Big Beautiful Bill? lol. The big beautiful bill didn’t cut a thing. Biggest piece of pork ever. It gave the dems everything they wanted while doubling the deficit to $4 trillion per year. My God, the “Big Beautiful Bill” still sends $40 million per WEEK to the Taliban in Afghanistan. And did you catch “$4 trillion annual deficit”?
– Cut funding to Planned Parenthood? Just for a year. This may be news to everyone, but federal funding was resorted to Planned Parenthood in July 2026.
Want some more local examples?
While having a veto proof majority in the NC senate and house, the Republicans members of the NC General Assembly did the following:
– Implemented “Green Energy” which mandated Duke purchase energy from solar and wind farms. This resulted in drastically higher electric bills, scarred our landscape and oceanscape with solar panels and windmills, enriched china (who made the panels), gutted our coal industry, while enriching the connected people via solar and wind farm schemes. And those connected people get perpetual royalties off our backs. It was the perfect scheme to fleece citizens brought to us by the Republican establishment.
– Juvenile Justice Reform. Every wonder how and why school districts lost control of students and what happened to cause the explosion of youth violence and street takeovers? You can thank the Republican controlled NC General Assembly for passing the Obama “Juvenile Justice Reform” in 2017, which made it impossible to punish criminals under 18. Thanks Republicans.
– Medicaid Expansion: In 2023, thanks to the Republican dominated General Assembly, NC became the 40th state to pass “Medicaid Expansion”. Hello Learing Centers and lots of other fraud.
Notice the trend in the above three state level examples? Every single one of them were Democrats priorities passed by the “Republican” House and senate, and sent to Cooper to sign. Can’t run against Cooper on these things, as he would rightly say “they were passed by Republicans, and I was happy to sign them” as his base cheers and ours seethes.
In spite of generations of abandoning the party platform and allying themselves with democrats at all levels, the establishment still expects conservatives to campaign and vote for them.
No. Not anymore.
It is very unfortunate, but the Uniparty Corrupt class has squandered all of the Goodwill they had with We The People. They have betrayed us.
They made their bed. Let them sleep in it.
We will find another party to support. One which aligns with our values. Personally, I am keeping my eye on the Veterans Party.