SOURCE FILE · NORTH CAROLINA
Roy Cooper vs. Michael Whatley
Two ad campaigns are running in North Carolina and each one puts a crime on a man who had nothing to do with it. Underneath them are two long public records — Cooper's and Whatley's, the best and the worst of each.
Two ad campaigns are running in North Carolina right now, and each one puts a crime on a man who had nothing to do with it. The Senate Leadership Fund, the Republican super PAC, is spending $17 million on a spot tying Roy Cooper to the 2025 murder of Logan Federico — a killing that happened in South Carolina, by a man South Carolina let out. WinSenate, on the Democratic side, spent $2.3 million saying Michael Whatley hired a convicted child sex offender. He did not hire him. He seated him twice on the committee that writes the state party's rules, which is the worse fact and the one the ad leaves out.
The Two Ads, And What Is Under Them
Left column is the ad as it runs. Right column is the record as of August 31, 2026.
What was said
“Roy Cooper let 3,500 criminals out on the street; 18 of them were murders.” Logan Federico, 22, was “a casualty of an agenda.”
Stephen Federico, in a Senate Leadership Fund ad released Aug 20, 2026
What the record shows
Logan Federico was killed in Columbia, South Carolina, by Alexander Dickey, who was released by South Carolina. Cooper had no part in it, and FactCheck.org found the ad “falsely implies” he did. The release number underneath the ad is real. The ACLU, Disability Rights NC and Emancipate NC sued Cooper in April 2020 over Covid in the state prisons, where more than 9,500 people had tested positive and 47 had died; a judge ordered the population reduced that June; the February 2021 settlement cut it by at least 3,500. Plaintiffs had asked for 18,000. Parole officers and law enforcement chose who left, not Cooper. Eighty-nine percent of those released were already within three months of their scheduled release date, and at least seven of the 18 later charged with murder were out before the settlement was signed.
FactCheck.org, Aug 26, 2026 · The Assembly — The Politics of Roy Cooper's Prison-Release Settlement
What was said
Whatley “hired” a convicted child sex offender — Harvey L. West Jr. — and “championed the rise to power” of a child sex predator.
WinSenate, $2.3 million campaign launched Jul 24, 2026, and the North Carolina Democratic Party
What the record shows
“Hired” is wrong, and Asheville Watchdog retracted its claim that Whatley appointed West to the 1st District chairmanship — district members elected him to that in 2019 and re-elected him after. What Whatley did do is seat West on the Plan of Organization committee, the body that writes the state party's rules, in 2021 and again in 2024. The party's own Plan of Organization says the chairman appoints every member of that committee. West pleaded guilty in 2000 to five counts of taking indecent liberties with a child, has been on North Carolina's sex offender registry since 2006, and the News & Observer printed the record in 2012. Whatley told WITN in June 2026 he did not appoint him; his campaign declined PolitiFact's questions. West resigned in mid-March 2026, days after the Watchdog story. In July 2026 the state GOP adopted a rule barring anyone convicted of sexual abuse or child abuse from party office.
WRAL / PolitiFact NC, Mar 27, 2026 · Asheville Watchdog · Spotlight Dispatch, Aug 5, 2026
Roy Cooper, On The Record
Governor 2017–2025. Attorney General 2001–2017. Best and worst, in no order and not weighted.
Medicaid expansion. He pushed for it from his first day in office and got it in 2023, his seventh year — coverage for roughly 600,000 low-income North Carolinians after a decade of Republican refusal. It is the thing he will be remembered for.
Teacher pay rose 19 percent across his eight years. He spent all eight of them arguing it was not enough.
HB2 was repealed under him — the bathroom bill that cost the state business and reputation. The compromise that got it done angered his own progressive allies.
Carbon and parental leave. He signed a law, passed unanimously, requiring utilities to cut emissions 70 percent by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050, and signed paid parental leave for state employees.
640,000 jobs added, fifth-fastest-growing state in the country, and $31.78 billion in announced development — Apple, Toyota, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Wolfspeed.
He vetoed 104 bills — near triple every other North Carolina governor combined since the veto was created in 1997. Republicans overrode 52, also a record, including 29 in a row once the supermajority returned in 2023. Cooper had championed creating the governor's veto himself, as a state senator in 1996.
He lost the fights he cared most about. Republicans opened private-school vouchers to families at any income level — nearly $5 billion over ten years. He never got the public-school funding, the counselors, the nurses, or the construction bonds he asked for eight years running.
ReBuild NC. His hurricane recovery program ran a $221 million deficit with about 1,600 storm victims still waiting on help and an audit finding inadequate oversight. The incoming Republican House speaker called it “a disgrace” that “should be a national scandal.”
The prison settlement is a real mark on him, ad or no ad. About 4,455 people appeared on the final release list and roughly 3,000 got out early because of it, including 51 serving life sentences — who the state says were already parole-eligible. North Carolina's own Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission studied 1,180 of them and found 48 percent rearrested within two years, slightly higher than people released the normal way that year.
Money. About $36 million raised through his campaign and victory committee — third-best of any Senate candidate this cycle, better than a million dollars a week — against Whatley's $16 million. He led by 12.5 points in the Carolina Journal poll released Aug 13.
Michael Whatley, On The Record
RNC chairman March 2024 to August 2025. North Carolina GOP chairman 2019 to 2024. Best and worst, in no order and not weighted.
He has been doing this since 1984, when he volunteered on Jesse Helms's reelection campaign. He was on George W. Bush's Florida recount team in 2000, served as a deputy assistant secretary at the Energy Department, and was chief of staff to Senator Elizabeth Dole.
He is more educated than the job asks for. A master's in religion from Wake Forest, a master's in theology from Notre Dame in 1994, and a Notre Dame law degree. His dissertation was on the effects of Roman occupation on the Judaisms of Palestine.
He ran the national party through a winning cycle. Elected RNC chairman March 8, 2024; that November Republicans took the White House and the Senate. He resigned the chairmanship Aug 22, 2025 to run for this seat, with Trump's endorsement.
He told his own party to vote early and by mail. The RNC's “Bank Your Vote” program under him pushed the exact methods the base had spent four years being told to distrust. His line on it: “Do I care how they vote? No, I do not.”
He was an energy lobbyist. Executive vice president of the Consumer Energy Alliance from 2008. He lobbied for Exxon Mobil and General Electric in a period when both were promoting carbon caps, and backed ethanol subsidies and drilling off the North Carolina coast.
His Senate financial disclosures show six-figure holdings in Alphabet and Microsoft, positions in Pfizer and Merck, more than $130,000 in ESG-aligned funds, and shares of Yum China.
Harvey West. He seated a man on the state party's rules committee in 2021 and again in 2024 who had pleaded guilty in 2000 to five counts of taking indecent liberties with a child and has been on the registry since 2006. He said in June 2026 that he did not appoint him. The party's own Plan of Organization says the chairman appoints every member of that committee.
WRAL / PolitiFact NC, Mar 27, 2026 · Spotlight Dispatch, Aug 5, 2026
In 2020 he said the opposite about Cooper and the prisons. As state chairman that July he attacked Cooper for having “not act[ed] to protect folks in prison” during Covid. In July 2026, asked about it, he said “we did not call in any way for there to be a release of prisoners.”
And the party under him called Cooper too tough on crime. Six years ago the North Carolina GOP, with Whatley as chairman, attacked Cooper for sponsoring “draconian” crime bills — stricter sentencing, abolishing parole for some offenders.
Money and the map. About $16 million raised against Cooper's $36 million, down 12.5 points in the Carolina Journal poll of Aug 13 and about 8.5 in the RealClearPolitics average in late August. The Supreme Court decision letting parties coordinate directly with campaigns and raise unlimited money hands him the RNC's cash advantage over a DNC that is in the red.
The New Republic, Aug 19, 2026 · Carolina Journal, Aug 25, 2026 · Washington Examiner, Aug 27, 2026
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★ The Hole
both campaigns are welcome to send a correction, and it will run with their name on it. so is anybody in north carolina who has better information than the ads do.
Spotlight Dispatch