GREENVILLE, N.C. — President Donald Trump’s political groups are no longer spending big money here to help his chosen Senate candidate. Other national Republican groups have effectively given up on the high-profile race in a state Trump won three times.
But Trump still visited here Tuesday night to rally with Michael Whatley, the Republican nominee, who is trailing his opponent, Democratic former governor Roy Cooper. It’s the latest instance of the president lending his time — if not much cash — to try to boost turnout among his supporters for candidates he personally likes. After Senate Republicans’ top super PAC canceled tens of millions of dollars of ad spending in support of Whatley at the start of the month, a nonprofit associated with Trump has in the last week put just over $2 million into the race.
No Republican candidate in this election cycle is more a creation of Trump’s than Whatley, who was the chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2024 campaign and, before that, the chair of the North Carolina Republican Party who boosted Trump’s 2020 stolen-election claims.
“I’m the one who got him into this,” Trump said with a nervous laugh. “I hope it works out.”
Trump endorsed Whatley for Senate ahead of the Republican primary, and Whatley in return has fully embraced Trump during the campaign — a stark contrast with outgoing GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, who has long publicly critiqued Trump and his policies.
The former RNC leader has no regrets about taking that approach, even as his counterparts in other top Senate battlegrounds have distanced themselves from some of Trump’s policies.
“Trump has won this state three straight times: 2016, 2020 and 2024,” Whatley said in an interview at the Pitt-Greenville Airport, where several hundred Trump supporters had gathered for the rally. “When it comes to getting out his voters in this state, there is nobody better.”
He told The Washington Post that his campaign had just purchased more television ad time, after going dark on the air over the past week. He said he has held a flurry of campaign events and more than two dozen news conferences in the last month to try to get Republican voters out — and his truck now has 430,000 miles on it.
“The October polls are not determinative of election results in North Carolina,” Whatley said. “If they were, President Trump would not be in office, Thom Tillis would not be in office and Ted Budd would not be a senator right now.”
In North Carolina, early-voting data — and not just public opinion polls — has shown Democrats with an advantage so far. Turnout overall is running ahead of the same point in 2022 and 2018, and voting among registered Democrats has outpaced that of Republicans.
Budd, who led polls in the final stretch of his 2022 campaign, added former senators Jesse Helms and Richard Burr to Whatley’s list of North Carolina Republicans who have pulled ahead after polling behind. Like Whatley, Budd dismissed questions about national Republicans withdrawing significant funds from the state.
“Michael Whatley’s back on the air, so I expect a strong close,” Budd told The Post.
Trump told the crowd Tuesday he is scheduled to return to North Carolina for another rally, potentially next week.
On Monday, Whatley appeared with Vice President JD Vance at a rally in the mountain town of Hendersonville, where Republicans are fighting to hold a competitive House seat. Trump’s rally in Greenville is designed to boost Whatley as well as the Republican House candidate in the nearby 1st Congressional District, which Republicans in the legislature redrew this year to make it more GOP-friendly.
Despite the gerrymander, the incumbent Democrat is polling neck and neck with his GOP challenger, Laurie Buckhout.
Trump says that his rallies “are having a huge impact” on Republicans’ election prospects. On Monday as he left to campaign in Kansas, he dismissed as “rigged” and “fake” the surveys showing Republican candidates running behind, and said Democrats are “getting their asses kicked.”
Whatley is being vastly outspent on ads in the final stretch of the campaign, after national Republicans effectively cut off spending in recent weeks.
This week, Cooper reported significantly outraising and outspending Whatley in the third quarter, having $12.4 million cash on hand going into October, compared with Whatley’s $916,000.
It was not immediately clear how large of an ad buy Whatley’s campaign has made or when the ads will begin airing. Cooper’s campaign has $7.5 million in ads reserved through Election Day, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. Senate Democrats’ top super PAC has reserved another $7 million in ads for Cooper, compared with a remaining $2.5 million in super PAC spending on the Republican side.
Beyond ads, Paul Shumaker, a longtime Republican strategist in the state who advises Tillis, said an effective get-out-the-vote operation is the GOP’s only hope of closing the gap.
“To fix the Republican turnout problem in North Carolina, there needs to be a massive infusion of cash for Michael Whatley for turnout of the Republican base,” Shumaker said.
A recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found Trump’s approval rating at an all-time low of 33 percent nationwide, but 38 percent among likely voters. Democrats, for the first time in more than a decade, were seen as more trusted to deal with the economy.
Taylor Cianci, 21, said she is excited to vote for Whatley. But the Jacksonville resident, who regularly hosts political debates on TikTok, said she knows the party in power faces headwinds in a midterm election.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Cianci said of the prospect of Whatley losing the Senate race. The young mother knows the war with Iran is the reason gas prices have gone up — and didn’t initially want Trump to start the conflict. She said she hears from others her age who are frustrated with the economy, and much less forgiving.
“They’re all feeling it,” Cianci said.
At least six protesters were escorted out of Trump’s rally Tuesday by security, continuing a recent pattern of demonstrators shouting to interrupt his events.
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