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Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley returned to the party’s convention stage on Wednesday evening, speaking on the first night of the event in Dallas.
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But this time, Whatley wasn’t leading the party. He was a candidate looking for support.
In November, Whatley, 58, a Republican from Gastonia, will be on North Carolina’s ballot for U.S. Senate against the state’s former governor, Roy Cooper, a 69-year-old Democrat from Raleigh.
“I’ve been able to live the American dream in North Carolina,” Whatley said on stage. “And as North Carolina’s next senator, I will fight every day to ensure that dream stays alive for every one of our kids and our grandkids.
“But that means we have to fight.”
North Carolina’s Senate race doesn’t have an incumbent because Thom Tillis, a two-term senator from Huntersville, chose not to seek reelection after getting into a public spat with President Donald Trump over how Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill will impact North Carolina’s Medicaid recipients in the coming years.
In 2024, Whatley was a mainstay on the RNC stage throughout the Milwaukee convention that happened just days after an assassination attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania.
This is the first time that Republicans have held a convention for the midterms and was done at Trump’s request.
Highlighting Whatley on the first night of the 2026 RNC, prior to Trump speaking hours later, could help bolster Whatley’s profile. He spent the majority of his speech attacking Cooper.
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Whatley highlighted the 2024 death of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian woman killed by DeCarlos Brown on the light rail in Charlotte. Repeatedly, Republicans have blamed Cooper for her death because of the release of 3,500 inmates from North Carolina’s prisons as part of a court settlement during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cooper refused to sign an executive order to release the prisoners, and the state was sued by several civil rights groups. A judge sided with those groups, saying he would likely find that the conditions in the jail had become unconstitutional. To appease the courts, North Carolina officials agreed to release 3,500.
Brown’s named appeared on the list, but he had already served his full sentence and been released prior to the settlement. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from tying Cooper to her death and several other unconnected homicides in North Carolina and South Carolina.
In response, Cooper’s campaign said in a written statement: “Michael Whatley is spending time with the people he’s spent his career delivering for – his fellow DC insiders” and that “North Carolina deserves better.”
Whatley highlighted what he considers Republican accomplishments:
“As the next senator for North Carolina, I will always fight for your values, and I will always fight for you,” Whatley said.
Trump handpicked Whatley to run for the Senate seat. Polling consistently shows Cooper ahead in the race and says that Whatley maintains little name recognition throughout the state.
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This story was originally published September 9, 2026 at 6:36 PM.