North Carolina Republican Party

The president scheduled to return to the state next week to campaign in Greenville for Republican Michael Watley.

And Watley welcomed the president's support, saying, quote, We all know President Trump drives NCGOP turnout better than anyone else.

We welcome President Trump and Vice President Vance back to North Carolina to campaign anytime.

Happening tomorrow, hundreds will gather to begin paying their respects to the Durham firefighter killed in the line of duty last week.

Again, we have a continuation budget, so if you don't pass a new one, the existing budget just carries over.

Yeah, so she said this proposal reeks of desperation from a flailing NCGOP, not real and lasting relief for hardworking North Carolinians.

Again, when it comes to gas prices, what can state leaders do? This is basically the only tool they have in their toolbox.

And the fact that every single Democrat but one voted for it and it got signed into law in a big flashy campaign event for a Democrat, like that should tell you that all of their kicking and screaming and criticisms that they had over the last week were all just political theater.

People don't like D.C. You add the fact that he said he is only running because President Trump told him to.

And then lastly, he has these things like he hired a pedophile registered sex offender to work for the NCGOP, and that has hounded him.

So all of that is just this perfect storm for Cooper to win in a pretty—it's going to be closer than some of these polls show, but I think pretty comfortably for North Carolina.

I think all of these races are going to be extremely close, even when you look at polling that shows the Democrat even slightly on top.

We're gonna talk about the U.S. Senate race here first.

Roy Cooper, former governor against Michael Whatley, the former RNC chairman, NCGOP.

So here is one from Cooper.

By the way, there were lots and lots and lots and lots of ads, so I'm trying to choose ones that are kind of representative, so.

And then the state organizational committee, it's, you know, one of those ones that goes over the rules every year and makes changes to policies and guidelines.

He got put onto that before Whatley even got into the chair spot at the NCGOP.

I believe Robin Hayes, the former chair, had put him in there at one point And those kind of positions, unless somebody else's name gets thrown in the hat or there's like a vying for the spot, they just get re-upped.

Right.

He withdrew from being a delegate and they sent an alternate.

It's now coming up again because he was involved with the party at the time that Michael Whatley was chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party.

And Michael Whatley appointed him to one of the committees known as the Plan of Organization Committee back when he was chair.

That's a fact.

So things are heating up with the Senate race.

We're going to spend a lot of time in the next several weeks focusing on the U.S. Senate race between former Governor Ray Cooper and Michael Whatley, the former RNC chairman and NCGOP chairman here in North Carolina.

A lot of polls show Ray Cooper way ahead.

The question is, is he? And is this really going to be a big year for Democrats? And if so, how big could impact the state legislature? Today, we have Tom Jensen from PPP Public Policy Polling.

People in other states are already starting to cast their ballot.

So I think this is getting to a point where it's going to be harder and harder for Trump and the Republicans to sort of come back from where it is right now.

Obviously, one of the biggest races in North Carolina is the U.S. Senate race between former Governor Roy Cooper and former RNC chairman and NCGOP chairman Michael Whatley.

We're taping this, incidentally, the day after Donald Trump was in the state to campaign for him.

But I did become involved in an organization, was on the board, and then later worked for this organization that worked in the political arena.

And eventually I ended up for a one-year stint at the North Carolina Republican Party.

And this was not my aspiration in life.

It was a friend who requested that I come and work there to help out during that election.

Michael Whatley, let's go through the rap sheet.

He was the former chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, and then became the chair of the Republican National Committee in twenty twenty-three.

So that's right, this is a guy who, you know, looked at the insurrection, you know, watched people storm the Capitol, uh, w-waving Donald Trump flags, attack police officers, and, and said after that, he was like, "You know, I, I wanna be the guy that's the standard-bearer for this party.

You know, I wanna be the person that is the representative for the institutional cop-beating, anti-democracy, insurrectionist, authoritarian Donald Trump cult party." That's, that's what he signed up for.

We can add another one to the list.

Ding, put another one up on the board.

As chairman of the North Carolina GOP, Michael Whatley appointed a convicted child sex predator who served six years in prison and over a decade as a reginal- registered sex offender to the North Carolina Republican Party's Plan of Organization Committee.

This predator, Harvey West, has publicly admitted that Whatley appointed him and said he was open with NG- NC GOP leadership about his criminal past from day one.