NC Democrats criticize GOP's Michael Whatley for rise of Mark Robinson
Republicans have coalesced around Whatley, head of the Republican National Committee and former head N.C. Republican Party, after he was hand picked to run for Senate by President Donald Trump.
Democrats are painting Whatley's previous support of Robinson — the state's lieutenant governor and eventually the GOP's nominee for governor — as evidence of bad judgment. Whatley led the NCGOP from June 2019 to May 2024, according to his LinkedIn. Robinson served as lieutenant governor from 2020 to 2024.
Before Trump picked Whatley and when Robinson was a potential candidate, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, the retiring Republican incumbent, warned Republicans against making Robinson their nominee, with a reference to the scandal, Robinson's online handle 'minisoldr.'
Tillis posted that for Republicans to be successful in 2026: 'Word to the wise, let's avoid minisoldr.'
Why Democrats are using this strategy now
While there is still a primary in 2026, given both parties' immediate support of the two leading candidates, it is highly likely the general election will be a faceoff between Whatley and Democrat Roy Cooper, a former two-term governor and four-term attorney general.
Rev. James Gailliard, a Rocky Mount pastor and former House member who's now running for state Senate, said Democrats are talking about this so far ahead of the 2026 election because it 'speaks to the severity of the moment.'
'I think it speaks to the severity of our need to be able to get on the runway quick so we can get out in front of voters and really express what the real issues are,' Gailliard said.
'You know, I'm a pastor, and, I don't like to see politicians three months before Election Day, and coming knocking at my church. I want to see them a year ahead of time, 15 months ahead of time.'
Whatley officially entered the race July 31 with an event in his hometown of Gastonia.
Rep. Phil Rubin, a Wake County Democrat, criticized Whatley's 'elevation of dangerous extremists like Mark Robinson' while Whatley led the NCGOP, 'even as Robinson said vile things' about a variety of people, including women and victims of violence.
'One of the things you need as a United States senator is strong judgment in both this sort of tactical sense, but also a moral sense. ... He was the head of the North Carolina Republican Party. He was the person who was probably more than anyone else, responsible for Mark Robinson's rise,' Rubin told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday in Raleigh.
Gailliard said North Carolina 'doesn't need someone representing us in the U.S. Senate who wants to be rewarded for having given us Mark Robinson.'
NCGOP response to Whatley criticism
NCGOP spokesperson Matt Mercer pointed to Whatley's comments to Bloomberg in the wake of the CNN report connecting Robinson to racist and sexually explicit comments, including Robinson calling himself a 'black Nazi.'
Whatley told Bloomberg in September 2024, when the Robinson scandal broke, 'those comments are absolutely antithetical to Republican values' and that Robinson would have to demonstrate to voters those words, actions and values were not his in order to win the election.
Robinson continued to deny the allegations even after he lost most of both his official and campaign staff, through the election, which he lost to Democrat Josh Stein. Mercer said that while Whatley called for accountability, Cooper backed former President Joe Biden after 'Biden's cognitive decline was laid bare in the June 27 debate last year .... Instead of taking the car keys away from grandpa because he wasn't up to the job, Cooper said he was going to go on and win the Daytona 500.'
Cooper spoke at a Biden rally in Raleigh the day after the debate. Within a month, Biden had left the presidential race.
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