The matchup is set in North Carolina’s crucial Senate race, with former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley winning their primaries, NBC News projects.
The North Carolina race will be central to this year’s battle for the Senate as Republicans defend their 53-47 majority. It’s a must-win race for Democrats if they have any hope of netting the four seats they need to take control of the chamber.
Democrats are confident that Cooper will be a formidable candidate after winning races for governor in 2016 and 2020 even as President Donald Trump carried the Tar Heel State. Trump also won the state in 2024, by 3 percentage points.
Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, a North Carolina native, passed on running to replace retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis. So Republicans turned to Whatley, who was chairman of the Republican National Committee at the time and had previously led the North Carolina GOP.
Trump encouraged Whatley to run and endorsed his campaign when he launched in late July. And the RNC gave Whatley an early boost by approving the national party to spend resources helping Whatley’s campaign, even though he had not yet won the primary.
Whatley, who tied himself to Trump in the early stages of the race, touted that endorsement in the run-up to Tuesday’s primary, launching a TV ad featuring Trump saying of Whatley that it is “so important that he wins” and that he “represents your values.”
Whatley also launched an ad on streaming services against Cooper ahead of Tuesday’s primary, offering a preview of his case against Cooper in the coming months.
The spot ties Cooper to a fatal stabbing last year on a train, where 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, was killed by Decarlos Brown Jr., who had previously served time in prison for robbery with a dangerous weapon. A federal grand jury indicted Brown in October.
Whatley’s ad, which features video footage of the stabbing, also features a narrator knocking Cooper’s support for a “woke agenda of cashless bail,” without a source for that claim, and saying the former governor “has her blood on his hands.”
“The murder of Iryna Zarutska was a despicable act of evil and it’s disturbing that Michael Whatley continues using the footage of her death in his ads against her family’s explicit wishes,” Cooper campaign spokesperson Jordan Monaghan said in a statement to NBC News, referencing a report that Zarutska’s family in September had asked the public to stop sharing the video. “Political candidates should stop lying about this tragedy for political gain and actually work to keep our communities safe.”
“Roy Cooper is the only candidate who spent his career prosecuting violent criminals and keeping thousands of them behind bars as attorney general, and signing tough on crime laws and stricter bail and pretrial release rules as governor,” Monaghan said.
Cooper, a former state attorney general before his governorship, signed a bill into law in 2023 changing how bail procedures for violent offenses.
Cooper, meanwhile, has been stressing affordability on the campaign trail, and is launching a “Make Stuff Cost Less” tour following the primary.
Cooper has also been building up his campaign coffers. Cooper had raised $21.1 million and had $14.2 million in his bank account as of Feb. 11, while Whatley had raised $6.3 million and had $2.5 million on hand.