Cooper targets affordability, Whatley focuses on safety as US Senate campaigns ramp up

Candidates for North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat — fresh off primary election wins — hit the campaign trail Wednesday in a race that could impact the balance of power in Congress.

Democrat Roy Cooper and Republican Michael Whatley pressed their signature issues at events in Raleigh and Charlotte.

Cooper, the former two-term governor, focused on food costs in Raleigh.  “Everywhere I go, folks are telling me that they are getting squeezed at the grocery store,” Cooper said to a room of about 60 supporters.

Whatley, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, spoke with law enforcement leaders and reporters about public safety at the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 9 in Charlotte. “We’re going to have a dramatic contrast between me and Roy Cooper when it comes to tax policy, when it comes to regulatory policy [and] when it comes to affordability,” Whatley said.

Cooper and Whatley are vying for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, who isn’t running for reelection.

A Democrat hasn’t won a U.S. Senate race in North Carolina since 2008, when Democrat Kay Hagan defeated Republican Elizabeth Dole. However, Cooper has also never lost an election in North Carolina. Flipping this seat would help toward Democrats’ efforts to regain control of the chamber.

Cooper spent the primary focused on economic issues — a top concern of North Carolina voters, and one Whatley pressed as he stumped for President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election.

Back then, Whatley regularly tied rising consumer prices — from energy to groceries to housing — to the policies of then-President Joe Biden. Cooper on Wednesday called out Republicans for rising inflation and said solutions need to start at the root of the issue.

“These federal government, reckless tariffs are driving up their costs and making it harder for farmers to afford what they need to grow the crops to stay afloat and ultimately burning the consumer,” Cooper said.

Cooper is expected to continue to make the economy a central issue of his campaign. An Ipsos poll last week found the majority of Americans disapprove of the Republican president’s handling of the economy, and that nearly two-thirds disapprove specifically of his handling of inflation and tariffs.

Cooper said he wants to work across the aisle to help roll back tariffs. He also said he wanted to crack down on what he calls unfair mergers that keep prices elevated.

“The corporations that own these grocery stores have too much power to begin with,” Cooper said. “When they merge, it reduces competition in the markets and jacks up prices. … We have to crack down on these unfair mergers. I will work to hold these corporations accountable and protect North Carolina families the same way I did when I was attorney general and as governor.”

Whatley’s campaign event on Wednesday focused on safety.

“The highest, most important function of any government, whether it’s a state government, a local government or the federal government, is protecting its citizens,” Whatley said. “We must keep our kids and our communities safe.”

Whatley said he would seek to introduce a federal version of Iryna's Law, a North Carolina law named after Iryna Zarutska, a Charlotte woman stabbed to death last year on a train. Republican President Donald Trump brought her mother to last month’s State of the Union speech and highlighted her killing.

The law requires stricter scrutiny of judges and magistrates when considering pre-trial release. It bans one type of cashless bail in North Carolina. It also makes it easier for people who have a history of mental health issues to be involuntarily committed to a mental hospital after an arrest. The law also attempts to bring back the death penalty in North Carolina.

“I’ll fight every single day to ensure no family suffers what her family has suffered,” Whatley said.

Whatley, who is endorsed by Trump and the North Carolina Troopers Association, says he wants to strengthen federal sentencing guidelines to increase the punishments for criminals. He also has sought to paint Cooper as weak on crime, and he has attempted to blame the former governor’s policies for the conditions that led to Zarutska’s death, a claim Cooper has denied and PolitiFact has debunked.

Cooper has pushed back on that narrative by pointing to his years as the state’s attorney general from January 2001 to January 2017.

“I’m the only candidate in this race who has actually prosecuted violent criminals and has worked to keep thousands of them behind bars,” Cooper said Wednesday. “I worked with the Republican General Assembly and signed laws that restricted bail for people, signed laws that made tougher sentences on gang leaders.”

Cooper also mentioned how he believes FEMA needs fixing after seeing how the federal agency has responded to natural disasters, including the impact Hurricane Helene had on North Carolina in 2024.

“FEMA is absolutely broken,” Cooper said. “One of the things that I want to do when I get there is work across the aisle to recreate FEMA, because clearly, it has been almost destroyed. It's critical for us to have a federal agency ready to step up to help people in businesses and local governments when these disasters strike.”

In January 2025, Trump signed an executive order to evaluate FEMA’s ability to address disasters and make recommendations to the president on how to improve the response. He then created the FEMA Review Council and put Whatley on it.

A spokesman for Whatley told WRAL News last month that he “supports efforts to make federal disaster management more efficient and looks forward to the FEMA Review Council presenting its report to the White House in the near future.”