Poll Time: Cooper OVER Whatley by SEVEN.
Granted, the poll is from the leftist group Carolina Forward. You could dismiss it on that basis.
But think back to early August. John Locke / Carolina Journal / Harper had Roy Cooper over Mike Whatley by EIGHT. A poll released a few days earlier by CBS17 / Emerson College had Cooper’s lead at SIX. So — whether you like it or not — this lefty poll is right in line with the two previously released polls.
Here’s something else to chew on. Polling from July — also from our pals on the left — found a statistical tie between Roy Cooper and a generic Republican in the 2026 US Senate race. (So, another GOP choice is more competitive against Cooper? Interesting.)
Whatley appears to be doing just slightly better than Thom Tillis. Internal polls conducted by DC GOP sources found Tillis losing by NINE.
In Cooper’s last statewide race in 2020, he defeated Republican Dan Forest by 4.53 percent. That translated into a winning margin of about 250,000 votes. So, a seven point lead would put us in the ballpark of about a 500,000 vote margin. We’re not looking at a close situation here, people.
Seeing stuff like this makes you really scratch your head and question the sanity of pretending like there is no GOP primary for Senate coming up in March. DC and Raleigh appear to be shoving a less-than-desirable choice down the throats of North Carolina’s GOP voters.
It’s also hard to understand why the Trump White House is so aggressively pushing Mike Whatley on us.
Whatley has never been all that big on the MAGA agenda. He’s been a loyal disciple of Trump foe Thom Tillis. He’s even trashed the former J6 political prisoners — who all got pardoned by President Trump.
A pretty interesting guy named Don Brown is out there stumping for the Senate seat. He’s a former Navy JAG prosecutor as well as a former special assistant US attorney. As a practicing attorney, he’s defended service members from persecution by the Obama and Biden regimes. He’s worked with War Secretary Pete Hegseth to reform rules of engagement for our troops on the battlefield. Brown worked with Team Trump in the aftermath of the disputed 2020 election.
Right down the line, Brown rejects Thom Tillis’s RINO path and supports the Trump agenda. Yet, political operatives in the Trump White House – for some reason – are bending over backwards to fix the election for Whatley.
Continuing on the current course appears to be assuring a decisive Cooper win over Whatley (accompanied by some collateral damage for other GOP candidates).
Instead of betting it all on a truly flawed Mike Whatley, why not encourage a lively primary debate with Don Brown and anyone else who wants to jump in?
Coop HAS TO BE TIED TO Charlotte and the massacre of the Ukranian girl. SO DOES Stein.
Brown needs to RUN ad after ad after ad, IDENTIFYING himself (he’s not a known state politician) and he needs to tie coop and stein to the Charlottle murder and how crime in this state has SOARED during both their administrations.
Of the people I know, that are onboard with Whatley, I’ve asked them why.
None of them, none of them, have answered, he’s the best person for the job.
Is it any wonder, why Congress is so dysfunctional?
Let’s see if Whatley will debate Brown, or will chicken out. That will tell you a lot about candidate quality. I understand that to this point, Onslow County GOP has invited both to appear together. Brown accepted. Whatley did not. A primary is a time for candidates to get known, and given that neither has run statewide for public office, both need to get out and show their stuff in debates. Primaries just help improve campaign skills and make the eventual winner stronger, and that is particularly true when neither candidate has previously run for public office statewide.
The party organization is not supposed to take sides in a primary and needs to stay out of it. The last time a recent NCGOP chairman sought statewide elected office was when former NCGOP state chairman Bill Cobey ran for governor. In fact, Cobey resigned as chairman to enter the race for governor. He had a primary, and the party did what they were supposed to and stayed out of it. That is not what I am seeing or hearing this time around. Whether the NCGOP treats the candidates evenly at the Hall of Fame dinner will be a big “tell”.
Speaking of the Hall of Fame, if those running that dinner had any fundraising savvy, they would hold a straw poll between Whatley and Brown at the dinner. That would push both candidates to get lots of their supporters there, selling more tickets to the event, and making more money for the party. The Iowa GOP used presidential primaries that way, holding a major dinner with high priced tickets and a straw poll for president. As the first state to vote, that drew national attention and motivated all the presidential candidates to turn out their supporters to buy a ticket and get a ballot in the straw poll.
How is Don Brown doing in the polls against Cooper? Or against Whatley?