Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley touted his commitment to improving public safety Friday during a campaign stop in Alamance County, where he said he would push for resources to make North Carolina safer if he beats Democrat Roy Cooper and other candidates in November.
“Law enforcement officers, sheriffs, all across this state, they need more supplies,” said Whatley, who was flanked by local law enforcement leaders in a Burlington conference center. “They need funding. They need grants. They need training. How do we have this conversation that we take to the Department of Justice and say, 'Hey, as part of your grant program, we want you to take a look at what this is going to look like.’"
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He also took aim at his Democratic challenger, who he says failed to support law enforcement as governor.
“He completely failed to back the blue, to stand up for law enforcement, to put criminals behind bars and to keep them there,” Whatley said of Cooper.
Whatley — a former Republican National Committee chairman who is backed by President Donald Trump — has sought to blame Cooper for the release 3,500 prisoners 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Cooper has pushed back against that narrative, pointing to his efforts to fight the prison releases in court.
Civil rights groups sued the Cooper administration in April 2020, alleging that the state’s correctional facilities weren’t adequately reducing Covid-19 infection risk among inmates. The Cooper administration disputed that allegation in court, then agreed to a settlement after a North Carolina Superior Court judge ruled that the civil rights groups were likely to win their case.
Cooper, a former two-term governor, also served as attorney general and in the legislature. He has pointed out that he’s the only candidate in the race who spent a portion of his career prosecuting criminals, and he has tried to connect Whatley to convicted felons.
“While Roy spent his career putting rapists and violent criminals behind bars and signing tough on crime, stricter bail and pretrial release laws as governor, Michael Whatley spent his appointing a convicted child sex predator who served six years in prison and spent over a decade as a registered sex offender to a powerful position within the North Carolina Republican Party," Cooper’s campaign said in a statement Friday.
The statement was referring to Harvey L. West Jr., a state Republican operative who pleaded guilty in 2000 to five counts of taking indecent liberties with a child, including with a person who was younger than 16. He was released from state custody in 2006 and required to register as a sex offender. West served as a member of the state GOP's Plan of Organization Committee for several years — including 2020 and 2024, when Whatley was state GOP chairman. West has said that Whatley wasn’t happy about West’s involvement in the party: “Whatley did not like me,” West previously told PolitiFact.
At the rally in Alamance County, law enforcement leaders said they’ll stand by Whatley because of his commitment to give them the resources and support they need.
"This man, if elected, is going to help change a lot of things that we need," Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson said.
Whatley has consistently trailed Cooper in the polls since the beginning of the race to fill the seat of outgoing U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis. But recent polls have revealed a tightening race.
A new Fox News poll showed Cooper leading Whatley by 9 percentage points.
Cooper led Whatley by 4 percentage points, 48% to 44%, in a recent Public Policy Polling survey. Enough voters remained undecided that either candidate had a realistic path to victory.
Those polls are tighter than the double-digit leads found in polls conducted closer to the March primaries.
Cooper, meanwhile, has focused primarily on economic issues in his campaign events.
At a campaign stop in Wilson earlier this week, Cooper said that, if elected, he would work to reduce costs by addressing Trump’s foreign policy decisions — including tariffs and the war in Iran — that Cooper blames for rising prices.
“Because of that war and because of the lack of strategy, prices have gone up, gas has gone up, diesel has gone up,” Cooper said.
Whatley has increasingly targeted tax, healthcare and energy policies Cooper supported during his two terms as governor and his time in the legislature. Whatley says those policies increased financial hardships for North Carolinians.
“Candidate Cooper is campaigning against Governor Cooper’s record of making stuff cost more,” D.J. Griffin, a spokesman for Whatley, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Candidate Cooper says ‘make stuff cost less,’ but Governor Cooper always made stuff cost more.”