Michael Whatley's campaign website tells you he was a federal law clerk. It tells you he was chief of staff to a U.S. senator. It tells you he chaired the Republican National Committee.

It does not tell you that he spent over a decade as a lobbyist for oil and natural gas companies.

Spectrum News reported this week that Whatley's biography leaves out the entire chapter — and when reporters asked the campaign why, "the campaign didn't provide an answer."

What's missing from the résumé

In 2009, Whatley helped found HBW Resources, a lobbying and public relations firm. Spectrum News reviewed 12 years of lobbying disclosure reports and found that Whatley and other lobbyists at the firm took in $3.5 million total, with $1.2 million of it coming from energy clients.

Until 2019, he was executive vice president of the Consumer Energy Alliance — a group that presents itself as a voice for energy consumers. It is nothing of the sort. The Energy and Policy Institute, which tracks utility and fossil-fuel front groups, documents CEA at length; the research outfit DeSmog notes it was founded by Whatley, operates out of HBW's Houston offices, and has essentially no staff of its own — nearly everyone listed as a CEA representative works for HBW.

In other words: Whatley ran a lobbying firm, and also ran the "consumer group" that hired his lobbying firm.

Its funders include ExxonMobil and Chevron.

He still owns the stock

Whatley's family holds hundreds of thousands of dollars in Exxon and Chevron shares.

Duke Energy was also a Consumer Energy Alliance client during Whatley's tenure. His family still owns Duke shares.

We've written about that last one before. Whatley owns up to $445,000 in Duke Energy stock — while Duke has been asking North Carolina regulators for permission to raise power bills across the state. Now we know he didn't just happen to buy the stock. The company was a client of the operation he ran.

That's the part the missing résumé line hides. Without it, the Duke shares look like an ordinary investment. With it, they look like the last thread of a working relationship.

The pattern of not answering

The campaign declining to explain the omission is not a one-off. It's Whatley's standard operating procedure:

• He called the police on reporters rather than answer their questions.
• He would not say a word about taking money from Chemours, the company that contaminated the drinking water of half a million North Carolinians.
• Trump named him Hurricane Helene "recovery czar" — and then audio surfaced of Whatley saying he'd told Trump to get rid of FEMA.

Every one of those is the same shape: a documented fact about Whatley's record, and a candidate who will not discuss it.

Why it matters for North Carolinians' bills

North Carolina is a state where energy policy lands directly on household budgets. Duke Energy is the dominant utility. Rate cases decide what people pay to keep the lights on. Coastal drilling and pipeline fights decide what the state's economy and shoreline look like for decades.

A senator's history of being paid by oil and gas companies — and running a front group funded by them — is exactly the kind of thing voters weigh before handing him a vote on all of it.

Whatley is asking North Carolina to send him to the Senate on a biography that lists the law clerkship and skips the decade he spent working for Exxon's and Chevron's side of the argument.

Voters can decide whether that's an oversight. But they can only decide it if somebody tells them, because his website won't.

Source

Reuben Jones and Ashley Gatz, "Whatley's lobbying work not featured on campaign website," Spectrum News, Aug. 14, 2026. Photo: AP, via Spectrum News.