North Carolina Senate candidate Michael Whatley has now called police on reporters at two public campaign events and hides on friendly podcasts — anything to avoid answering questions.
North Carolina Senate candidate Michael Whatley calls the Jan. 6 prosecutions 'ridiculous persecution' and backs paying rioters — including pardon recipients later convicted of child sex crimes.
Supporting Devastating Health Care Cuts for North Carolinians
North Carolina worked hard to expand Medicaid and provide health coverage to hundreds of thousands of residents. Michael Whatley opposed that expansion — and then backed a bill designed to unravel it.
More than 1.4 million North Carolinians rely on SNAP to afford groceries. Michael Whatley called the bill that made the largest SNAP cuts in history "a huge win."
Elon Musk's DOGE slashed federal jobs and services — and a Senate investigation found it wasted billions of taxpayer dollars in the process. Michael Whatley called DOGE "absolutely critical" and wants to bring it back.
Whatley praised Musk's DOGE as "absolutely critical" and said "We need to do more. We need to get that process back up and running and very aggressively" — even after a Senate investigation found that DOGE generated at least $21.7 billion in waste across the federal government in just six months.
Michael Whatley wants to bring back the DOGE cuts that wasted billions of taxpayer dollars and gutted government services. We deserve better.
Failed Western North Carolinians as Hurricane Recovery Czar
Trump appointed Whatley to lead Hurricane Helene recovery in North Carolina. Residents said he went absent and called for him to be removed.
Whatley was tapped by Trump to lead hurricane recovery in North Carolina but was reported as being absent during the recovery and criticized for failing to step up. His failure led to a petition calling for his removal.
Pushing Trump's 2020 Election Lies and Excusing January 6
As chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, Michael Whatley pushed Trump's lies about the 2020 election. And after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, he refused to blame Trump — and punished a fellow Republican who did.
After the 2020 election, Whatley repeatedly claimed on the radio that "there was massive fraud that took place" in "places like Milwaukee and Detroit and Philadelphia," and shared false claims that Republican observers were blocked from polling places — even though there was no evidence of massive fraud anywhere, and Trump's allies lost every one of the more than 60 lawsuits they filed.
After the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Whatley refused to blame Trump, saying "the fault lies with those people who attacked the Capitol." Under his leadership, the North Carolina Republican Party unanimously censured Senator Richard Burr for voting to convict Trump of inciting the insurrection.
Michael Whatley pushed Trump's election lies and punished a fellow Republican for holding Trump accountable for January 6. We deserve better.
Whatley has told voters at least 15 times that he "grew up" in Blowing Rock, North Carolina — but an NBC News review found he was born in Michigan, lived there until his early high school years, and spent only about three years in Blowing Rock before leaving for college.
Michael Whatley is a DC insider and big oil lobbyist who has spent his career delivering for special interests, not North Carolinians. We deserve better.
Elevated a Convicted Child Sex Offender Within the GOP
Michael Whatley elevated Harvey West Jr. within the North Carolina Republican Party — even after being warned multiple times that West Jr. was a convicted child sex offender.
Michael Whatley elevated a convicted child sex offender within the North Carolina Republican Party and refused to answer questions about it. We deserve better.
