First, we are 32 days out from Election Day 2026, and only 13 days out from the start of in-person early voting in North Carolina. If you have not yet made a plan to vote, please do! And make sure your family and friends have a plan too!
Almost all of the important information you need to make a plan can be found here. Pro tip: the earlier you vote, the earlier people will quit calling you to ask you to vote.1
Second, just today, national Republican funding groups cancelled T.V. ad buys and directed money away from supporting the GOP U.S. Senate nominee Michael Whatley. That money is now going to Kansas. Kansas last elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 1932 and holds the record for longest single-party control of both U.S. Senate seats of any state in the country.
That’s the good news. It means the GOP is all but writing off Whatley’s campaign and instead is focused on defending what should be guaranteed win in Kansas. Republican candidates across North Carolina will suffer from this shift as well. Any coattails they may have hoped for will disappear, much like down-ballot Democrats suffered in 2020 and 2022 when national Democrats left North Carolina.
But it’s not all great news. When a major national or caucus funding shift like this happens, the other side also sees it at a chance to redirect money to closer races. That means national Democrats may focus less on North Carolina and leave Roy Cooper on his own to close out the race.
The race will now primarily be funded by the individual campaigns. As of the last reporting period, Cooper had raised more than three times as much as Whatley and had more than five times as much cash on hand to spend. Even with that massive advantage, I have no doubt Cooper’s team will continue to run like they are 10 points down and fight with everything they have until the last vote is counted. It’s not over yet, but it’s looking good for Roy Cooper.
But there may be some bad news in this announcement as well. Like Cooper, down-ballot candidates will be more on their own now. However, they do not have the same fundraising machine of former Governor Cooper. And whatever coattails Cooper may have offered with massive outside spending focused on turnout will now be much smaller.
This puts our state-wide judicial races at risk. Justice Anita Earls has raised a staggering amount of money for a judicial candidate. But even that amount does not fund a state-wide field operation remotely comparable to a U.S. Senate campaign with ten times the budget or more.
Most people Cooper’s team drives to the polls will likely vote for Democratic judges as well. If the field operation supporting Cooper is smaller, that work is now on the down-ballot candidates to pick up the slack. And that means they need — you guessed it — more resources and more help.
While the news today is great for national Democrats and Roy Cooper, we cannot overlook our down ballot candidates here in North Carolina. Chief Justice Cheri Beasley lost re-election in 2020 by 401 votes. Justice Allison Riggs won re-election in 2024 by 734 votes. Every vote is critical in our judicial races!
Now is the time to dig deep. Double down on your support for local candidates if you can. Even a few dollars can make all the difference in races that will be raising thousands of dollars, not millions.
For the judges, that means supporting Justice Earls and Judges Arrowood, Walczyk, and Hampson. You can support these rockstar Democratic judicial candidates via our 2026 NC Judicial Slate!
Whether a person votes in North Carolina is public record, although whom they vote for is not. Nearly all campaigns and political party groups run daily lists for phone banking and remove those who have already voted. Vote early and get yourself off their lists!