- [Kelly] Michael Whatley enters North Carolina's 2026 Republic and Primary for US Senate as former governor, Roy Cooper appears ready to announce he'll seek the Democratic nomination.

This is "State Lines".

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[uplifting music] ♪ - Welcome back to "State Lines" everyone.

Come on in, sit down with us.

Got some good friends around me.

I'm Kelly McCullen, and joining me today, Brooke Medina of the State Policy Network.

Hi, Brooke.

- Hey.

- Paul Shumaker of Capital Communications.

He's known as a Republican campaign consultant and strategist.

And beside him, his counterpart on the Democratic side, Scott Falmlen of Nexus Strategies.

Gentlemen, always great to have you.

A great week.

We got lucky this week, didn't we?

- Thanks for having us.

- Colin Campbell, WUNC.

And if you've watched this show once you've seen our good friend Colin, back from vacation and refreshed.

Good to see you, sir.

- Good to be here.

- It's a good week to start.

I mean, I just, we just keep moving on.

Let's take an eye towards 2026 where this week Laura Trump, the president's daughter-in-law, said she will not be running for North Carolina's US Senate seat.

So Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, has quickly entered the Republican primary for US Senate in 2026.

Mr. Whatley is, we're told, viewed quite favorably in the supported by President Trump.

Even some state Republican leaders I've seen on Twitter hope that Mr. Trump would endorse quickly, which he has, if not outright pick the Republican nominee to replace US Senator Tom Tillis.

Mr. Whatley ran the state Republican party in past years.

He has already resigned from the Republican National Committee.

So for the GOP side, Colin will get to Mr. Cooper next.

On the democratic side, the race is on, the Republicans are outta the game.

- Yeah, and it seems like we're we're more or less gonna skip past the contested primary portion of things.

And once Whatley and presumably former governor Roy Cooper are officially candidates we'll be straight into general election season with all that entails, all the attack ads, everything else.

So it's, it's gonna quickly go from a sleepy summer on the Senate front to full on into the race with two, I think probably very strong candidates for their parties.

- I know it's your life and career and for every reporter, and I know all of you, but is it, does it get exciting when it's time for candidates to jump on board, or does it just layer on another facet of the job that oh, yes, legislatures floating around, but now we've got a US Senate race?

- Yeah, I think the, the challenge with these is it's just so much higher pressure when you get a US Senate race 'cause you have people pitching you stories and opposition research from either side left and right and criticizing how you wrote a story.

So it can be really tiring.

It's a little fun at the start, but if you ask me a few months down the road, I'll be already ready for it to end.

Probably by the time we get to the end of this year, and we still have till November, 2026.

- Scott, you and your partner Morgan, with Nexus Strategies, you're on Team Cooper.

You run that campaign, or you will, in theory, at least after Monday, they say.

So good job leaking all those sources out there to the mass media.

About Michael Whatley, we understand if you're on Cooper's team, you're gonna have to go after him as a candidate, but as a candidate, as a strategist, what does he bring to the table for the Republicans?

- Well, you know, I, being the chairman of the Republican National Committee probably brings the ability to raise some money and has a good network.

But, you know, he's a DC Insider.

He is a lobbyist and he'll have to, he was a huge supporter of Mark Robinson last year.

So he'll have some things to answer for to the voters of North Carolina as this progresses.

- Paul, your client was Tom Tillis, or is Tom Tillis, he's gonna step aside outta the US Senate race, doesn't need that BS he publicly, very loudly said.

Now we've got Michael Whatley.

Will that soothe the GOP base?

- Well, soothing the base is absolutely done.

I mean, that's, that's what the president did by picking, you know, Chairman Whatley for that.

Clearly Scott's already been doing his talking points getting that geared up.

I think what we all have to understand here is, and this is a good thing for North Carolina, first of all, this is a national Senate race.

This is not a North Carolina Senate race.

Only less than 10% of the funding is gonna come out of North Carolina.

90% is gonna come from other sources.

You're talking 600 to 800 million, most likely, that's gonna be spent here in this state.

And what happens in North Carolina influences the rest of the country.

It's gonna be critical for Republicans to win this seat.

And Whatley is the best candidate to lead forth in that effort to make sure we keep this seat.

Because if you look at the map, not for 2026, but if you look at the national map in 28 and in 2030, Republicans need two US Senators for North Carolina to be able to maintain and keep their majority in the Senate.

- There is one thing is the best candidate that the GOP has, one is a good candidate for office, is Michael Whatley a good candidate when you have other North Carolina leaders who are in elected office with experience in office?

- Well, quite frankly is is that Whatley brings sort of a blank slate to the table.

Whereas Governor Cooper has a long, almost a 40 year footprint of votes and records and things to be accountable for.

The challenges for Whatley, is he's an unknown commodity.

That could be a liability.

It can also be an asset because he's a blank slate.

He could become what he needs to become, whereas Governor Cooper's gonna be harder for him to become something other than what he has been.

And what Republicans will try to do is change that narrative of the perception of him.

And the reality is, is that this, you know, the Senate race starts next week.

It's gonna be ongoing.

You're gonna see ads probably the next 14 days up on the air and it's gonna be continued on through the cycle.

And that's not unlike what's happened in the past.

In Thom Tillis first US Senate race in 2014, I mean, ads against Senator Hagen started, gosh, 20 months out and continued on.

Ads against Thom Tillis started 18 months out, even, you know, during the Republican primary we had ads run against us from the Democratic side.

- Scott, how do you handle, your candidate would be very well defined, two terms as governor, multiple terms attorney general, against the blank slate candidate with his great base support.

How do you handle that blank slate?

- Well, I'll let Governor Cooper, first of all make his announcement on his own timeframe.

But listen, Governor Cooper left office in 2024 as very popular, high approval ratings.

The people of North Carolina know that he fights for them.

They might not always agree with him on every issue, but then they know he looks out for them and what their interests are, he cares about them.

And, you know, we'll see what develops in the next week.

- Brooke, you're with a national group now.

And this is state lines.

I'm all about North Carolina voters.

This is a national Senate race per the consultants.

Is that in this whole idea of we're gonna defend democracy, is it great for democracy that 90% of the funds come from outside of the state to influence our vote?

- I think it does speak to the fact that a lot of these statewide races do take on such national high stakes, because yes, the math is looking at where power is going to be in Congress and that does influence North Carolinians directly.

But what you talked about, about this money related to the race and what Paul mentioned, this is going to be probably the most expensive US Senate race ever.

And so we're looking at around 750 million that's going to be spent there.

The stakes are very high, but really at the end of the day, each of these candidates is going to have to speak to the voters and they're going to have to sing the song and with conviction, where the voters are at in that moment in November, 2026.

- This next part of the show let's focus on the potential candidacy of former Governor Roy Cooper.

National, International Media says he will enter the 2026 Democratic primary field for US Senator.

Scott, to your credit, let him announce what he wants to do.

I think that's very fair.

So I won't press you on that.

But he is a two term governor, multiple term state attorney general.

There's a poll out by a group called, Coefficient, at least I think that's what they were called, suggest Cooper and a generic Republican candidate were tied at 48% support each.

And of course there's former US representative Wiley Nickle, who's running for the Democratic nomination, everybody is shutting down the Wiley Nickel campaign.

Is that the way it works in party politics?

Watley's gonna take over that GOP field.

Is that best for everyone involved here?

- Well, we'll see and let Congressman Nickel make his decision in his own time when we see how things develop in the coming days.

But whoever the Democratic candidate is is gonna have a lot of things to run on to be both proactive in what they wanna do to help middle class North Carolinians and what they're against.

And some of the things they're seeing come out of DC, tearing away healthcare from people, cutting education funding and the like, is just not, I don't think, what the voters really signed up for.

- Just from you watching from inside the room for what you can tell us, two terms as governor for Mr. Cooper, that's a full-time job.

I guess he gets a day off here and there.

Any US Senator would or anything.

How long does it take one in your experience to recharge their batteries?

Because you leave office in December and it's like, you know, you take some time, go up teach school, you come back 100% in just six months, right?

Is it something you're called to do or does it feel like a job?

- Well, it has been six months, and he had a great time when he was teaching in Boston for six weeks.

But he's been back and, you know, I think he's giving the decision and has given the decision very deliberate thought and we'll see what he has to say next week.

- Paul, do things get easier for the Democrats with Thom Tillis deciding to retire?

- This race, look, first of all, North Carolina, when you talk about just the generic ballot on a poll, North Carolina as a state is a 50/50 state, either side can win on any given day from that standpoint.

And quite frankly, as I look at the way this dynamics has played out, what's happened on the Republican side with Michael Waley and what's happening on the Democrats side with Roy Cooper is that both parties are avoiding divisive primaries, is we're gonna allow the vote to focus on the general voting and electorate population earlier on and to have that discussion.

This race right now today is gonna be a one and a half to two and a half point race one way or the other.

Turnout's gonna be critical for both sides.

Winning suburban or breaking even with suburban based, particularly suburban based female voters gonna be critical for both sides.

It's gonna be the battlegrounds.

What rural turnout looks like compared to suburban urban turnout is gonna be part of that makeup.

The reality is is that either side is in play in this state, regardless of who the candidates are, because that's the political structure of North Carolina.

- And you're not involved in the US Senate race at all.

So I'll ask you, in 2020, their candidate was Cal Cunningham on the Democratic side and you were running, I think it was Tillis at the time.

That's a late breaking thing.

Something happened there and it just shifted the electorate to Senator Tillis by a couple of points, as you said, fulfilled the prophecy.

But last year, Mark Robinson was buried months out.

How does this go in 2026?

Do you see it being a horse race?

- Well, it's gonna be a horse race.

It's gonna be a horse race down the end.

Because you don't have candidates that have the inherent liabilities that Mark Robinson brought to the table in 2020.

One of the reasons why the Democrats are very smart in burying Mark Robinson early on, because then it allowed them to take that and carry it on and attack other Republicans like in Lieutenant Governor's race, particularly in the Supreme Court race, particularly in the AG's race, we saw that part play out.

We don't have those liabilities here of either the candidates on either side.

So therefore, you look at 2020 and you look at how that race turned and broke late, what you gotta understand here in North Carolina is that neither of the two parties or the mainstream voting population control that.

You got 30% Republicans, you have 30% Democrats, you got 40% unaffiliateds.

Unaffiliateds, quite frankly, half the unaffiliateds are pure swing voters.

They have no loyalty to any candidate.

They don't like the left, they don't like the right, they don't like politics, and they quite frankly don't like politicians.

They think both of them, both sides are lying to them all the time.

So their loyalty, they can turn on a dime.

And that's what we saw happening in the 2020 race.

I mean, Cunningham went from winning, well he went from being plus well with unaffiliateds to being net.

negative with unaffiliateds.

In less than 10 days.

The Republicans didn't change their standing in that race.

Democrats didn't change their views in that race, but the unaffiliateds did.

And so that's what can happen here.

Nobody can take anything for granted up until election night when all the votes have been cast and we continue and count.

We may count for days afterwards, by the way.

- Brooke, I love listening to two generals.

They've gone head to head time and time again.

It's not personal; as much as we make our candidates so personal and angry, the folks running the campaigns can call a victory and call a defeat.

I actually admire that and appreciate why they're on our show.

However, in a couple years, whether it's a year and a half or so, are we gonna be sick of the US Senate race or do you think Cooper and Whatley can give us a high-minded campaign focused on the issues where we can make an informed decision?

- I think a lot of that is going to depend on where just the rest of the nation is out, what's going on.

We seem to have a crisis very regularly, more regularly than anyone would care to, and that's going to shape and inform what actually is happening.

Cooper is, I mean, he's a calculated political actor.

He knows how to keep things tight-laced, buttoned up.

He's very disciplined in that way.

Whatley is a party operative.

And so what does that dynamic look like?

Who influences more, Cooper's narrative, Whatley's, or just the American in North Carolina voter?

I think that will be interesting.

But in particular, what I find fascinating is just looking at Cooper's electoral victories in the past, and how there has been historically a North Carolina voter that goes for Trump and goes for Cooper.

And I think that's going to be an interesting dynamic, and seeing how that plays out given Whatley has Trump's endorsement and Cooper is who he is.

- Alright, Colin, you're gonna chase these two candidates all over this state, I guarantee you that.

I think this would be, will this be an exhausting race?

Will it be a fun race, and are Cooper and Whatley the right candidates for their respective teams?

- You know, they're, I think both of them are safe candidates.

You know, and I might go so far as to say it's somewhat milk, toast, or bland.

These are people who don't have a whole lot of scandals in their history.

They're, you know, older white males, and they've are sort of the more safe choice for both of their parties in terms of having the record, not having the kind of baggage you saw with Mark Robinson's candidacy.

So a lot of it's gonna be, maybe it'll be issue to some extent.

I think you'll see Democrats really tying Whatley to Trump because there's not been much daylight between him and Trump over the time that Trump's been in the public eye as a politician, as President.

Cooper, you'll see Democrat Republicans go after various aspects of his voting record, his handling of hurricane recovery, some other things he's done in office.

But at the end of the day, I think this ends up being a referendum on the first two years of the Trump administration, it becomes a very nationalized race, which is a reporter focused on North Carolina issues can also be a little bit discouraging because, you know, then it comes out looking like every other congressional race in the country.

- I was gonna ask you about that.

We're both in that same field booking interviews trying to get access to state candidates, and I'm seeing more and more of them.

They only wanna go on their respective safe national cable news outlets.

M-S-N-B-C, if you're a Democrat, they'll walk through hot calls to be on Fox News.

Some of us won't get a call, we get a call back.

They just don't wanna be on the show is, are we gonna see the local media on a local race in the scheme of things shut out in favor of, if you wanna see this candidate or that one, you better have cable television.

- Yeah, I think it's entirely possible we've seen the last of televised local debates in this kind of race, that getting those two candidates to agree to a particular TV audience, a moderator, and go head to head in the same room, there may not be much upside to that, and there's much more upside to them to try to energize their base by going on some sort of national cable thing, 'cause that allows them to do fundraising if they're getting a national audience, whereas a smaller audience at a North Carolina-based TV or radio station like we're at, they just don't see the same level of advantage there.

So a lot of that ends up, you're talking to surrogates, people who work for the campaign, or you're getting sound bites from other interviews of going out to a national audience and trying to chase the race that way, which is just less, you know, I think, valuable than somebody with a North Carolina background interviewing you about North Carolina issues.

- Yeah, North Carolina schools will be receiving $36 million of an expected 165 million as the Trump Administration has partially released that cash earlier this week.

The administration has frozen education funds, so it can review how those funds are being spent at the state and local level.

This near $36 million funding round for North Carolina will cover our afterschool and summer programs.

Teacher training and English language learning funds are still frozen.

These newly released funds are said to have guardrails in place, Paul, to prevent improper spending.

So the first media cycle was Trump has cut all these funds.

We're starting to see funds leak back out.

It sounds like a lot was frozen.

Some was cut.

What's the distinction to the person who's reading the news and voters and people worried about these issues?

- Well, a couple things.

First of all, if you fall within what I call the issue set, and Democrats like to play the card, the sky's falling, issues being cut.

World's going to come to an end.

Your kid's not going to get the kind of education that we expect that they deserve.

At the same time, you have a good path of voters out there to expect responsibility in government.

They think government's not being responsible with the money, how the money's being flowed.

I think what the Trump Administration has done a good job saying, "Hey, we're gonna put a hold on it.

We're evaluating it.

We released part of the funding.

We're gonna continue to evaluate.

We're gonna be good stewards of it."

The difference here is, is that with the Trump Administration, they have an expectation of a return on that investment.

And on the Democratic side, that expectation is we'll throw more money at it, and we hope we fix the problem, but there's no expectation of return on that investment.

So it's gonna be argued out.

It's gonna be played out.

It's gonna be put into the TV ads.

It's gonna be used against Michael Whatley.

At the same time, the rebuttal back on the fiscal responsibility and everything else is gonna play.

And it cuts.

I mean, it cuts both ways.

It does cut one way or the other.

So it's not a slam dunk for the Democrats by far.

- Scott, Jeff Jackson did jump out there, and he went ahead and filed the lawsuit to reclaim all those funds.

He wants all the funds at once.

It gives the appearance, Republicans will say, "Well, you didn't let us review the funds and release them."

But the lawsuit's now out there.

What is the balance on this issue?

- Well, it's just the indiscriminate nature of all of this.

The firings, the cuts in research grants, the cuts in school funding, the cuts in healthcare.

This is not what the people of North Carolina, or I would say, the people in the United States signed up for.

I think we're all for getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse, but I think we're seeing way more than that, and it's not productive, and it's not, I think, where this country wants to be.

- Colin, are these types of issues with funds frozen and being released, is it a true whipsaw effect, or is it how it's being reported and covered by media?

And I think it's done a pretty good job, but it does feel like we're slamming on the brakes and then going forward, slamming on the brakes, going forward.

- Yeah, I mean, when you sort of look specifically at the day-to-day developments as opposed to the larger picture here.

I mean, the big picture, to me, is to what extent does the federal government pull back from being the entity that funds a lot of these education issues?

Because if they pull back, then it becomes a state government issue.

Does the legislature fund it more?

It becomes a local issue.

Does the county commission and the school board and all these communities step up and find some other revenue to support these kind of programs that they value them?

And that's sort of the debate that I think will play out if you see a longer term pullback in the federal government's role in funding education because that's gonna lead to potentially needs for tax increases at the state or local level to kind of fill the gap in these federal funds that may be going away at some point.

- [Kelly] Yeah.

- I'll put a little historical context to this.

45 years ago, there's a guy named Ronald Reagan running for president of the United States, who said he wanted to abolish the Department of Education.

Okay, it's taken 45 years later to actually having some of that actually being done.

Both the individuals here are talking about status quo, status quo.

Ronald Reagan, I mean, Donald Trump ran saying the status quo's not getting the job done.

The American people voted and agreed with him and he's shaken up the status quo.

And that's actually a good thing in American politics.

And that's something that we have not seen in a long time.

I've seen this in focus groups with unaffiliated voters.

They said, you know, look, I didn't vote for the guy, but he's the first guy to get elected president who's actually doing what he said he was going to do, and there's got to be some good that comes out of that.

So he's shaking it up, it's gonna fall out and we're gonna see how the dust settles and the '26 midterms are going to be, it is ultimately gonna be a reflection of that and the voters will decide.

But the fact is, shaking up the status quo can be a good thing when it comes to how we lead this country and how we govern this country.

- I will say Congressional Republicans, the way they voted, representing North Carolina, have handed our state leaders and your state policy is gonna change based on federal behavior.

There's a difference in being a conservative legislator and a conservative Congress person it does seem now, very much so.

Your thoughts?

- Yeah, well it is interesting just on the tails of the one big beautiful bill and just what that really is doing is kicking power back to the states and authority back to the states when it comes to how they are operationalizing and utilizing taxpayer dollars using those federal funds.

And so we hear debates about education reforms that are happening at the federal level and Medicaid reforms, things like that.

And really what this is doing is, is putting the states back in the driver's seat and making them more accountable, the state lawmakers for how they utilize those funds rather than just the, you know, federal, you know, government printing more and more money that actually drives up our taxes.

So this is a good thing that it's been a long time coming.

There's been a reckoning that has needed to happen in Washington where the status quo does have to be disrupted.

So it's heartening to see.

And then with regard to the education funding in particular, again, these funds are just being held right now to ensure, it's like a quality control check to make sure that these funds are going to where they need to be.

And at the end of the day, this only really represents 1% of education spending here in North Carolina.

- Educate us on what is improper spending of those funds?

Was it into things that are like DEI?

Is it things that an administration perceives as woke?

What is improper?

- Yeah, well.

- Or allegedly.

- Sure.

Voters have been very clear that they are tired of creating political footballs out of social issues.

And that has permeated through all levels of government in the form of DEI and ESG.

And so, yeah, it's time to actually deal with that.

- Well, I would just say that school lunch programs and summer school programs are not waste, fraud and abuse.

- Well, the Trump administration is touting some statistics.

The media is confirming it.

Immigration efforts are quite strong in North Carolina at the federal level.

ICE detained more suspected illegal or undocumented immigrants the first six months of 2025 than for the entire 2024 year, the number changes daily.

When I wrote this script and I was gonna present it to you, over 1800 people had been arrested since January 25.

46% had criminal convictions, 34% had no criminal conviction, and 20% were only here illegally.

92% of those were men.

Not sure how to dissect that because people that are pro-immigration, not reform, but enforcement of the law would say, if you're in here illegally, that is a crime.

And we're now we're back into this criminal offense versus civil offense.

This gets confusing.

Help us sort this out.

- For many, many decades people have not been able to sort this out.

So I doubt we're going to get to it on this show, but I think this is one of those opportunities where the American voters, again, this was a chief issue in the 2024 election.

And so, you know, no matter how the political spin tries to emerge from this, it's the fact that American voters wanted better immigration reform and enforcement.

Whether the perception was due to a criminal behavior of those who are here illegally or jobs concerns, all of that.

They are...

The federal government has approached this in a tiered way in which there is a focus on the criminal nature, but there are some administrative concerns about if you're not here legally, you need to come here legally.

And also that's a fairness factor that resonates with a lot of Americans who have immigrated here legally and gone through the proper channels.

- Paul, I have to say in six months what a difference government action has taken on the immigration front to change the tone.

Who says government can't work?

And inaction is an action, I guess at this point, looking at Biden era statistics versus what Trump has done at the border to shut down border interactions.

Your thoughts on this issue that ice is gonna ramp up with one One Big Beautiful Bill and they're already doubling down on efforts in our state.

- Yeah.

And, here's one of the things, with the immigration issue, one of the reason why it's so much in the forefront in 2024 and has been the forefront actually going back, the last eight years we've used in elections and everything else, is that illegal immigration is a safety concern issue in suburban American, and it plays that way.

And it's a very simple process.

This is an issue that's so easy to reduce to the lowest common denominator against any president or for any president that is simply enforce our laws.

Enforce our immigration laws.

This is not a country that is opposed to immigration.

This is a country that's opposed to illegal immigration.

Let's have legal immigration.

Let's have a process that allows for that.

Let's have that based in what we need to do from economic structure and everything else.

The difference is, is that you've had one administration wants to lessen the rules so that for whatever reason, for compliance, you call humanitarian whatever else, but the fact of the matter is, it comes down to let's impose our laws.

- Scott, the take on that from the democratic side, this'll be an issue at 26, no doubt about it.

- Well, listen, I think we are all forgetting deporting gang members and violent criminals who've been convicted of a crime.

I think just indiscriminately picking people up off the street, who are the farm workers, the laborers who do a lot of the dirty work in this country that nobody else wants to do.

I don't think that's what the American people signed up for.

- Last word, 20 seconds calling a social issue back to the forefront.

That's a little bit different than most social issues, but it's not going away.

- Absolutely.

I mean, I think it's gonna be one of the key issues going into next year's elections, and it's one of those ones that's hard to cover as a journalist because you often don't see the day-to-day ground level, what's happening with this.

And that's sort of difficult to sort of get at really who's being affected by this because a lot of it's happening without a whole lot of public records going with it.

- And with that, we'll wrap this show up.

Brooke, Paul, Scott, Colin, thank you so much for being on.

More importantly, thank you for watching "State Lines".

Email your opinion to statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thanks for watching.

See you next time.

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