When U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis announced his decision not to seek re-election last year, all attention immediately turned to President Donald Trump, whose endorsement was widely expected to be decisive in a Republican primary to replace the two-term senator.
Within weeks, Trump had endorsed someone he and North Carolina elected officials know well: Michael Whatley, a former chair of the North Carolina Republican Party who was serving as chair of the Republican National Committee at the time.
The key question was whether a Trump endorsement would be enough for Republican voters in North Carolina to coalesce around Whatley. And during the March 3 primary, those voters will have options, with former JAG officer Don Brown and former state superintendent candidate Michele Morrow among seven candidates on the GOP ballot.
A January poll from left-leaning Carolina Forward indicates that Whatley holds a significant lead in the race. Of those polled, 46% of registered Republicans said they preferred Whatley in a primary, with 4% saying they preferred each of Brown and Morrow.
"No polling has any of the other candidates coming within even spitting distance of Michael Whatley. So it really appears to be a question of margins much more so than a question of who emerges victorious," Chris Cooper, the director of Western Carolina's Haire Institute for Public Policy, said in an interview.
The winner of the race is expected to face former Gov. Roy Cooper, who is easily the most prominent Democrat seeking the U.S. Senate seat, in November's general election.
The candidates
Don Brown: Brown is a retired U.S. Navy JAG officer who has recently practiced law in pursuit of a bevy of conservative causes. Brown has worked as a defense lawyer for several people who were convicted after storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, securing a pardon for at least one client.
He initially entered the Senate race to offer a grassroots alternative to Tillis and has stayed in it as the same to Whatley. In 2024, Brown unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination in the 8th Congressional District, losing to current U.S. Rep. Mark Harris.
A number of right-wing figures have endorsed Brown, including former Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, election-denying attorney Sidney Powell and former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Michele Morrow: The 2024 GOP candidate for the state superintendent was a final-day entry into the Senate race. In a way, Morrow is trying to upset a candidate widely seen as the favorite in the same way that she defeated incumbent State Superintendent Catherine Truitt in the 2024 primary.
After winning the primary, Morrow went on to lose in the general election to Mo Green, a Democrat. Morrow also unsuccessfully sought a seat on the Wake County School Board in 2022.
Morrow, a frequent critic of what she sees as liberal policies in local school districts, has emerged as a right-wing firebrand. That has resulted in a slew of controversial statements, including remarks that prominent Democrats like Cooper and former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden should be executed.
Morrow has raised a number of issues, including overhauling FEMA, restricting mail-in voting and replacing the Affordable Care Act with "market-based solutions" including expanded health savings accounts. She also supports typical GOP policies like cutting regulations and taxes, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and expanding school choice.
Michael Whatley: The former Republican National Committee and N.C. Republican Party chairman received Trump's endorsement even before he officially entered the race in the days following Tillis' decision to not seek reelection.
Since then, Whatley has appeared with Trump at rallies in Rocky Mount and on Fort Bragg.
"We are the only candidate in this field that has been asked to run by the president, who has been endorsed by the president, and we are the only candidate that's in a position to be able to beat Roy Cooper next fall because we are focusing very hard on the issues that matter to North Carolina," Whatley told reporters before the Rocky Mount rally.
Whatley said the main issues he is focused on include job creation, lowering prices and community safety.
When Trump visited western North Carolina shortly after returning to the presidency, he said of Helene recovery, "I'd like to put Michael in charge of making sure everything goes well."
Midterm Elections 2026
- February 28: Early voting ends
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Voters this fall will federal, state, and local elections. Early voting for the primary is already underway. Here are some important dates:
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Important links:
- Longtime sheriff Sam Page seeks to unseat Senate Republican leader Phil Berger in Rockingham County
- Preview of the Republican primary for Senate
- Nida Allam challenges incumbent Valerie Foushee in the Democratic primary for Congress (publishing February 26)
- Crowded Republican primary for northeast Congressional District 1 (publishing February 27)
Election previews
- NC News Roundup: Primary early voting check-ins
- More than 70,000 NC voters need to 'fix' their voter registration. Are you on the list?
- State legislature's "power grab" pulls elections authority away from NC governor. Plus, columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom.
- Two longtime North Carolina political rivals (and friends) are 'Talking About Politics.' Plus, PlayMakers' 'Primary Trust.'
2026 Election coverage on Due South
Democrats have since repeatedly pointed to the "recovery czar" position and said Whatley should be doing more to accelerate slow-moving recovery funds in western North Carolina. That's a message that Brown and Morrow have echoed on the campaign trail.
At the Rocky Mount event in December, Whatley pointed to billions of dollars in relief, to the successful rebuilding of most storm-damaged roads and bridges and to water and wastewater systems that had been returned to service as an example of a successful recovery.
"That is not to say, 'Mission accomplished.' We have a lot more work to do, but the work that has been done over the course of these 11 months has been very significant," Whatley said.
Trump also appointed Whatley to the FEMA Review Council, a 20-member committee that was meant to suggest reforms to federal emergency response within a year of its January 2025 formation. That council has not yet produced a final report, and Trump issued a new executive order giving it until March 25 to do so.
Other candidates in the race include Durham entrepreneur Richard Dansie, Garner entrepreneur Thomas Johnson and Elizabeth Temple of Clayton.
Margot Dupre will also appear on GOP ballots, but the N.C. State Board of Elections disqualified her from the race after finding that she does not live in the state.
Campaign finances
Whatley holds a major fundraising lead in the primary field.
Whatley's candidate committee has raised $6.27 million as of Feb. 11, according to Federal Election Commission records. At that point, the candidate committee had more than $2.5 million on hand.
Whatley's campaign spending ramped up in February, with the primary drawing closer. Between Feb. 2 and Feb. 11, the campaign spent more than $1.65 million on a sequence of campaign ads and mailers, according to FEC records.
Additionally, a pair of political action committees associated with Whatley had raised a total of about $8.25 million through Dec. 31, the FEC said. At the end of 2025, the PACs had a total of about $3.07 million on hand.
Notably, Whatley, who is known for his ability to raise money, has received support from political action committees aligned with Senate Republicans. That's something none of the other GOP candidates have done and is indicative of the support that Trump and other party officials are giving the campaign.
The NRSC, Senate Republicans' national political spending apparatus, has given the Whatley campaign $62,000.
Whatley's campaign also received donations from PACs affiliated with sitting Republican senators. That includes $10,000 each from the Dirigo PAC associated with Maine Republican Susan Collins, the Let's Get to Work PAC associated with Florida Republican Rick Scott and the Oorah! Political Action Committee associated with Indiana Republican Todd Young.
Whatley, who spent more than 15 years lobbying in the energy sector, has turned back to it for campaign funds.
One of the largest donations to any of his affiliated committees — a total of $250,000 to the Whatley Victory Committee — came from Nathan Ough, the president and CEO of Voltagrid, a Texas-based company that is marketing mobile, natural gas-powered microgrids to data centers.
The PAC raised at least another $150,000 from employees of energy companies, including $7,000 from ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance and $3,500 from Marathon CEO Maryann Mannen.
Brown, who had entered the race even before Tillis bowed out, had raised $187,237.58 as of Feb. 11.
Brown had spent $164,130 of that and had just under $24,000 on hand as of Feb. 11.
Morrow's campaign had raised $10,720.04 and had just under $5,247.73 on hand. Its only specific expense listed on FEC records was the $1,740 federal filing fee.
The main issue: Who can beat Roy Cooper?
Roy Cooper, a two-term governor and four-term attorney general, has never lost a statewide election — or any election. Brown and Morrow are trying to make the case that to beat Cooper, Republicans should look outside the mainstream.
Primaries, Western Carolina University professor Cooper said, "are about personalities, they are about perceived electability, they are about the personal direction of each of the candidates much more so than they're about something like abortion rights where clearly all the Republicans stand in the same place."
Polling done in recent months shows that Cooper holds leads over both Brown and Whatley. Still, both Brown and Morrow are trying to convince voters that they can beat Cooper.
When the right-leaning Carolina Journal polled a hypothetical Cooper-Brown matchup in November 2025, Cooper held a 48% to 38% advantage over Brown. That was slightly wider than the 47.3% to 38.6% lead the same poll found the former governor had over Whatley.
The Assembly recently reported that Brown and Whatley trailing by such similar margins in that poll was the impetus for Morrow to enter the field.
No publicly available polling has yet tested how Morrow would fare against Cooper.
