Michael Whatley, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, is happy to campaign on Republicans’ reconciliation bill. That’s a departure from the retiring Republican senator he’s running to replace, who saw it as a political liability.
And it’s just one of several ways that Whatley, the candidate Republicans have coalesced around, is embracing the MAGA agenda. While that political strategy carries a level of risk in a battleground state like North Carolina, in an interview with NOTUS, Whatley said he has little concern, citing President Donald Trump’s past success in the state.
“People forget President Trump carried North Carolina three times. It is the only one of the seven battleground states that he won all three times,” Whatley said. “And so having his support, as his endorsed candidate, with his complete, total endorsement, is really, truly important, not just in the primary but also in the general.”
When the seat opened up after Sen. Thom Tillis announced he would retire at the end of his term, there was speculation that Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, would jump into the race. When she decided to sit it out, she cleared the field for Whatley, who said Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Senate Majority Leader John Thune were among those who called him and asked him to run.
Now Whatley is poised to run against the state’s popular former Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, in what will be one of the most closely watched races of the cycle. And unlike many candidates who would look at that terrain and try to hew closely to center, Whatley is betting that a close alignment with Trump will appeal to voters.
“At the end of the day, this is a bill that has strong support across the state,” Whatley said of the reconciliation bill.
“I will say about the ‘one big, beautiful bill’ that an overwhelming percentage, 70% plus, of North Carolinians support having President Trump’s middle-class tax cuts extended,” Whatley said. “They support no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. They also support the national security, energy security and border security provisions that were in the bill.”
While the bill does cut taxes significantly, in order to help pay for it Republicans made significant cuts to Medicaid. It’s a move that politicians from both parties have been highly critical of, including Tillis.
“We need to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse,” Whatley said. “That’s where President Trump is. That’s what this bill does.”
In total, the reconciliation bill is projected to cut more than $1.1 trillion from Medicaid nationally over the next decade, resulting in 11.8 million more people being uninsured by 2034, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. Hundreds of thousands of those were projected to be in North Carolina.
By contrast to Whatley, Tillis often made a point of distancing himself from Trump, gaining a reputation as a thorn in his side. Tillis eviscerated Trump’s reconciliation bill on the Senate floor on his way to voting against it, claiming that the package — particularly the Medicaid cuts in it — would harm the residents of North Carolina.
“I respect President Trump, I support the majority of his agenda, but I don’t bow to anybody when the people of North Carolina are at risk, and this puts them at risk,” Tillis told reporters in June.
Similarly Democrats believe the reconciliation bill will be a political liability for Republicans. In a statement, Mallory Payne, a spokesperson for the North Carolina Democrats, emphasized the Medicaid cuts in the reconciliation bill.
“North Carolinians deserve leaders who will deliver for them, not for the DC insiders,” Payne said.
However, Whatley pointed to the history of Republicans winning statewide races for federal offices, even if they have recently lost other statewide elections, like to Cooper and Democratic Gov. Josh Stein.
“I’m excited about representing North Carolina,” Whatley said. “I think that we have a great opportunity to win this. When we cross our t’s and dot our i’s, we win in North Carolina. And we are absolutely going to cross those t’s and dot those i’s.”
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This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and The Assembly.