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In a campaign event Friday filled with prayers and calls for religious faith, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley accused Democratic opponent Roy Cooper of promoting a “transgender ideology” that he said isn’t aligned with North Carolina values.
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Whatley pointed to Cooper’s vetoes while he was North Carolina’s governor of legislation banning transgender athletes in school sports, limiting discussion of gender identity in elementary schools and restricting gender-transition procedures for minors. All three bills became law after Republicans overrode Cooper’s vetoes.
Whatley is among the Republican candidates at the state and national level who’ve accused their Democratic opponents of being transgender activists. Whatley’s campaign billed the rally held at Haw River Christian Academy in Pittsboro as a “Protect Our Kids” event.
“When you think about the sum total of Roy Cooper’s agenda, it is fighting for values from New York, fighting for values from California, fighting for values that we don’t share here in North Carolina,” Whatley said. “I’m going to fight for your values.”
Cooper has been endorsed by LGBTQ+ groups such as the Human Rights Campaign.
“North Carolinians deserve a fighter who leaves no one behind. That fighter is Roy Cooper,” Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said in the group’s endorsement. “He is ready to serve North Carolina, including the 748,000 LGBTQ+ North Carolinians, at a crossroads in history, bringing his experience to a U.S. Senate that desperately needs more pro-equality voices.”
Whatley is among the politicians who’ve weighed in on the hiring of a transgender elementary school music teacher in Wake County. Some parents at Middle Creek Elementary School in Apex have given the school district a Sept. 30 deadline to either let their children opt out of the teacher’s class or face a federal lawsuit.
“We cannot allow men in high heels and skirts to indoctrinate North Carolina’s children,” Whatley’s campaign said in an Aug. 4 Facebook post that included photos of the Middle Creek teacher. “We must have safe kids and safe communities. Cooper will allow these predators into our schools to prey on 6-year-olds.”
At the time this article published, Whatley’s campaign had not responded to an email Friday from The News & Observer asking about the social media post.
Federal law prevents employers from discriminating against hiring people based on their gender identity.
The American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association all say that gender is a spectrum, not simply male or female, The News & Observer has reported.
Whatley continued his attacks on transgender people Friday.
Whatley said Cooper “has championed a very destructive transgender ideology throughout the course of his tenure.” Whatley then proceeded to say Cooper had appeared at events with former state Rep. Cecil Brockman and Chad Sevearance-Turner.
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In 2018, Cooper attended a gala for the Charlotte LGBT Chamber of Commerce, whose acting board president was a registered sex offender. Sevearance-Turner, who goes by several names, was convicted in South Carolina in 2000 of lewd conduct with a child under 16 and was required to registered as a sex offender for a minimum of 10 years.
Brockman, 41, a Democrat from Greensboro, served in office until October 2025, when the SBI arrested him on charges of two counts of indecent liberties with a child and two counts of statutory sex offense with a person who is 15 or younger. Cooper called for his immediate resignation.
“Michael Whatley is getting desperate and it’s shameful that he’s using heinous crimes to try to deceive North Carolinians,” a Cooper campaign spokesman said in an email Friday.
The spokesman also said Whatley appointed “a known convicted child sex predator to leadership roles within the NCGOP.”
Whatley has faced questions about the appointment of convicted sex offender Harvey West to a powerful committee within the state Republican Party while Whatley led the party, and about campaign events featuring leaders of churches with child sex abuse or sex abuse scandals, The N&O has reported.
On Friday, Whatley also pointed to three Cooper vetoes of anti-LGBTQ bills that lawmakers overrode in 2023 to become state law:
When he vetoed the bills, Cooper accused Republican lawmakers of engaging in “political culture wars.”
“Roy Cooper is going to fight for boys who want to play in girls’ sports and men who want to go in women’s locker rooms,” Whatley said. “That is not OK in North Carolina.
“What’s OK in North Carolina is common sense. It’s being able to get together here today in a church with a private school to talk about values, to talk about faith, to talk about how we’re going to make North Carolina strong.”
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This story was originally published September 25, 2026 at 3:40 PM.