#NCSEN26: Mr. Brown, going to Washington?
A lot of folks are fast-forwarding this US Senate campaign to November 2026. Many folks are saying: “Hey, Whatley is the man. Trump has blessed him. Bring on Cooper.”
Lest we forget that there is a Republican primary in March. Mike Whatley – a native of Watauga County and current resident of Gaston County – will face off against Washington County native and current Union County resident Don Brown.
Michael Whatley has been groomed and well-taken care of by the Thom Tillis political operation and the rest of the NCGOPe. He managed to get himself hired as the General Counsel of The Republican National Committee despite having an inactive law license for over six years.
Meanwhile, Whatley’s opponent in the March primary, Don Brown, has been putting
his law license to good use. The UNC-Chapel Hill and Campbell Law grad served as an active-duty member of the Navy’s JAG Corps – made famous by a long-running hit TV show. Brown also served as a special assistant US attorney before moving on to work for Raleigh’s Maupin Taylor Ellis & Adams. (Firm partner Tom Ellis gained fame as a senior adviser to the late US Senator Jesse Helms.)
Brown eventually formed his own law firm in Mecklenburg County. A significant chunk of his work has focused on fighting government overreach and weaponization. He defended workers whose livelihoods were threatened by aggressive workplace policies and practices during The ’20-’22 Great COVID Scare.
Brown advocated for the January 6th prisoners — many of whom were thrown in jail by the Biden regime with outrageous charges and sentences and not much in the way of due process. Whatley and his mentor Thom Tillis trashed those people.
In the end, most all of the prisoners were pardoned by Donald Trump.
Brown stepped up to defend our service members whose careers were threatened or even ruined by policies instituted during the Obama and Biden years. He worked with now-defense secretary Pete Hegseth to reform what many had seen as overly strict rules of engagement for troops in the battlefield. Brown also was a leader in the inquiry into the 2011 shoot-down in Afghanistan of a helicopter packed with Navy SEALS. Many have believed the Obama administration had set in place, and then covered up, rules that unnecessarily put the lives of the men in that helicopter in danger.
Brown also gained fame for defending a Fort Bragg soldier the Obama administration prosecuted for murder over a battlefield incident in Afghanistan. Brown’s client reportedly ordered his men to shoot at some natives speeding toward their position on a motorbike. The natives were killed. Brown’s client got convicted and sent to prison. Evidence surfaced that the Afghans were likely connected to Al Qaeda’s bomb-making operations. In 2019, the soldier earned a pardon from President Trump.
Brown also put his legal expertise to work aiding the inquiries into the 2020 presidential election. He worked closely on that endeavor with Trump attorney Sidney Powell and former North Carolina Chief Justice Mark Martin.
Michael Whatley said a lot of stuff about vote integrity during his time as state party chairman, RNC General Counsel, and RNC Chairman. He got a lot of camera time, but ended up with little to show for his rhetoric. Brown, however, has a record of rolling up his sleeves and jumping into the fray.
Whatley’s last run for party chairman came in 2023, during a national clamor for paper ballots. For some reason, the vote was conducted via some sketchy software loaded with all kinds of bugs. In spite of the plethora of complaints and concerns and errors, Whatley ended up with more votes at the end of the day. Instead of seeking to investigate the problems, calm people’s fears and concerns, and validate the election, Team Whatley told all the complainers to SHUT IT and move on.
Whatley did nothing as state party chairman to address vote integrity concerns. As head of the RNC – he, as a typical RNC official, spouted a lot of rhetoric followed by little to no action or results.
Fundraising at the state party during the Whatley era consisted of washing RNC funds from DC through the state party’s account along with special-interest shakedown proceeds collected by the party’s legislative caucuses. We even had reports of some big party donors expressing skepticism about the state party continuing to ride the Whatley horse.
The state party has blown some winnable statewide races under Whatley’s reign. DC likes to give him credit for Trump’s three wins here. Roy Cooper won TWO governor’s races here (2016 and 2020) while Trump was carrying the state. Michael Whatley and the rest of the NCGOP staff could have shut down and moved to the South Pole for a year and Trump STILL would have won. Neither Whatley nor any of those others hanging out on Raleigh’s Hillsborough Street had one doggone thing to do with Trump’s success in North Carolina.
Like the Emperor in that famous story, The Chairman is wearing no clothes. DC is doing their best to prop him up and move him along the food chain. It’s a shame. It’s not in Trump’s wheelhouse to extol, endorse and prop up such a lack of accomplishment.
Many people are out there thinking Michael Whatley is the only choice against
Roy Cooper. You have another in the GOP primary. One that is head-and-shoulders above that schlub Whatley.
2026 is going to be a tough election. Trump is not on the ticket. Roy Cooper knows how to run a statewide race. He has a sharp team around him. National Democrats are excited. They will pump a lot of money into this state.
You can go into the polling place and vote based on a Trump endorsement. (*That strategy worked well with Mark Robinson, didn’t it?*)
Or you can look at the records of the two GOP candidates and make an informed decision. Is the one with the most buddies in DC right now really the best choice for us, here at home in North Carolina?
Michael Whatley can’t beat Roy Cooper. He sure couldn’t do it as NCGOP chairman.
Don Brown may not be able to, either. But he’s looking more like the best, most palatable choice among the two horses Republicans have on the track for this race.
Don Brown has shown by his actions that he supports the Republican Party platform. I have known him for some time through his books and because he is a frequent and welcome speaker at meetings of the Sweet Union Republican Women. He is far and away the best qualified candidate for US Senator. I believe Don has an excellent chance of beating Roy Cooper because Don has an actual record of accomplishment that puts Cooper to shame.
Michael Whatley has shown by his actions that he supports Thom Tillis and his Uniparty enablers. If you doubt it, just do a search on his name on The Daily Haymaker’s search engine and review his history. It would not surprise me to learn Trump moved him up from NC Chair to the RNC in order to keep a closer eye on him. The fact the federal government is now looking into election integrity in NC, after questionable votes cost Republicans a seat on the Supreme Court, is a direct reflection on Whatley’s failure to insist on cleaning up voter rolls. Of course, given Whatley’s use of questionable software to get elected NC Chair, who ever believed he could be trusted to work seriously on election integrity? His attempt to get delegates to the state convention to endorse the idea that “NC has a record of fair and transparent elections” was laughably lame and failed miserably because most in attendance had heard of the Wilmington Riots, knew black citizens were disenfranchised by the Democrats for years, and were well aware of how corrupt NC elections have been since the Democrats actually conducted an armed insurrection (with mass murder) in NC over a century ago. (The Wilmington Riot of 1898 was intentionally misnamed; it was a massacre orchestrated by leaders of the Democrat Party who used the press to encourage white supremacist activism.)
Money can’t buy everything, and I don’t think the Uniparty cash will ever convince the grassroots activists who have seen Tillis or Whatley in action to vote for Tillis 2.0..