WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump told reporters outside the White House Friday he’s concerned about North Carolina Senate candidate Michael Whatley’s campaign, as the top Republican super PAC paused spending on ads in the race. “He’s a great man,” Trump said. “I am worried about him. I hope he wins. He’s a great man and he was a great leader for the whole Republican Party when I won, and ...

Then-North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley, now the GOP Senate candidate, speaks during the North Carolina GOP convention in 2023, in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Robert Willett/News & Observer/TNS

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump told reporters outside the White House Friday he’s concerned about North Carolina Senate candidate Michael Whatley’s campaign, as the top Republican super PAC paused spending on ads in the race.

“He’s a great man,” Trump said. “I am worried about him. I hope he wins. He’s a great man and he was a great leader for the whole Republican Party when I won, and he’d be a great senator.”

Reporters asked Trump about the Senate Leadership Fund’s decision to pause spending on ads in North Carolina’s Senate race just a month before the Nov. 3 election, as first reported by Semafor.

The Senate Leadership Fund works to protect and expand the Senate majority for Republicans. Democrats need to flip four seats this fall to win a majority.

Whatley, a Gastonia resident and former chairman of both the state and national Republican parties, is running against former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat from Raleigh. The Senate Leadership Fund already has invested $30 million into the North Carolina race, which is one of the most watched in the country.

But Whatley’s campaign isn’t counting him out yet.

“Roy Cooper recently said about federal elections in North Carolina, ‘Democrats are often ahead until they are not,’” said DJ Griffin, Whatley’s spokesman, in a written statement. “Undecided voters who break later decide the election in North Carolina and the majority of those late-breakers typically go Republican.”

Pausing funding

The Senate Leadership Fund’s decision to pause funding in North Carolina isn’t a surprise and has been foreshadowed by both local and national outlets for weeks.

The decision came one day after Whatley’s 58th birthday and allows the PAC to focus on other races across the nation. That includes Kansas, where Semafor reported SLF is funneling seven figures into help for incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall against Adam Hamilton, the Democrat.

“The fact that the biggest Republican Senate Super PAC took its money out of North Carolina today and put it into Kansas says all you need to know about which direction the Senate Majority is headed,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a social media post.

The Senate Leadership Fund isn’t the only PAC signaling Whatley is in trouble in the election against Cooper. Old North Action withdrew $6.5 million of their $21 million investment last week, while Americans for Prosperity Action made a $22 million ad buy for several Senate races, but not in North Carolina.

Flipping North Carolina

Political pundits believe that North Carolina’s Senate race is the most likely to flip. Whatley and Cooper are seeking to fill the seat occupied by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who decided not to seek reelection for a third term.

“A Democrat has not won statewide federal office here in nearly two decades and North Carolina is a 50-50 state,” said Jeff Allen, Cooper’s campaign manager, in a written statement. “We’re building a campaign to earn every vote and make sure North Carolinians know that Roy Cooper will fight for them, while Michael Whatley will continue to enrich himself at their expense.”

Cooper, 69, has never lost an election since first running for the state House in 1987. Since then, he’s also served in the state Senate, four terms as attorney general and two terms as governor.

Cooper has won every poll in North Carolina, often by double-digits, since entering the race against Whatley in July 2025. And those polls continue to show that despite Whatley having held political jobs since high school, he has little name recognition.

But Whatley spokesman Griffin continued in his statement, “We feel confident we have the resources to highlight career politician Roy Cooper’s 40 years of failures and win in November.”

Choosing Whatley

Initially, Tillis, a Republican from Huntersville, planned to seek reelection and face off against Cooper in the midterms. Political pundits believed that matchup would break fundraising records pushing spending toward $1 billion.

But Tillis dropped his reelection bid in June 2025, after publicly sparring with President Donald Trump over the impact Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act would have on North Carolina’s Medicaid recipients beginning in 2028.

Trump then handpicked Whatley to succeed Tillis.

Money hasn’t flowed into the state nearly as predicted without Tillis in the race.

Two weeks ago, Trump visited Gastonia to stump for the former chairman. But Trump’s remarks, calling North Carolina “a blood-soaked killing field,” made more headlines than his support for Whatley.

At-risk Republicans

Other Republicans throughout North Carolina are facing uphill battles in their elections cycles.

North Carolina’s Republican legislators redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor their party, giving Democrats only three assured districts out of the state’s 14.

That includes redistricting North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, which has been represented by a Democrat for more than 100 years, and placing more Republican voters into the area than Democrats.

Despite that, because of the political climate and Trump’s low favorability among likely voters, political analysts have ranked the 1st district as a toss-up.

The 11th Congressional District also was moved to a toss-up after Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican from Flat Rock, dropped his reelection bid among a sexual harassment scandal, leaving Republican state Rep. Jennifer Balkcom with just weeks to campaign in his place.

This week, Rep. Greg Murphy, a Republican from Greenville, found his race downgraded from “solid Republican” to “likely Republican.” And Rep. Brad Knott, a Republican from Raleigh, was added to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s target list Friday.

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