GOP pulling up to $10M out of North Carolina Senate race
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
You don't see a super PAC admit defeat in the middle of a Senate race too often. But the Senate Leadership Fund just did, quietly pulling up to $10 million out of North Carolina after already burning $30 million on Michael Whatley. That money was supposed to be a $71 million cushion.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
WASHINGTON — Republicans are moving up to $10 million from North Carolina’s Senate race and putting it toward shoring up deep-red Kansas, The Post has learned, while the main Trump-backing super PAC and the official Senate GOP campaign arm are done spending in the Tar Heel State.
The Senate Leadership Fund, aligned with Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) , initially set aside $71 million to elevate North Carolina GOP nominee Michael Whatley — but is now cutting its losses after shelling out just $30 million, according to sources familiar with the super PAC’s thinking.
One of those sources suggested that at least $8.2 million is now being used to boost incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), while another suggested the sum sent to the Sunflower State could top $10 million before Election Day Nov. 3.
At least $20 million is also being diverted to Iowa to help GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson keep the seat left vacant by retiring Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). Another $14 million is going to the Ohio Senate race, where Sen.
Jon Husted (R-Ohio) is seeking election to finish the term of Vice President JD Vance. “SLF’s job is to maintain the majority and this move reflects the most effective and efficient use of resources to do exactly that,” another source told Semafor, which first reported the news.
At the same time, both the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the main political action committee defending the GOP’s majority in the upper chamber, are canceling future spending on North Carolina through Election Day, sources noted.
Democratic former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper leads Whatley, the ex-Republican National Committee chairman, by nine percentage points in the latest RealClearPolitics polling average. In February, a Republican campaign operative predicted to The Post that the North Carolina race was going to be “probably one of the most expensive races in the country.” The GOP currently holds a 53-47 majority in the Senate, meaning Democrats have to flip a net of four seats to regain control after two years in the minority.
Marshall is in a tough re-election fight against Democratic candidate Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor. The RCP average shows Marshall ahead by just 1.5 percentage points in a state he won by more than 11 percentage points in 2020.
More recent surveys from Emerson College and Wedgewood Polls show Hamilton ahead by two percentage points. SLF recently released an ad attacking Hamilton as “too extreme for Kansas, while Marshall’s campaign has relitigated criticisms from the Democratic primary that the Senate hopeful mishandled an internal investigation into a “ child predator ” at his church two decades ago, in a new ad rolling out Friday.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
You don't see a super PAC admit defeat in the middle of a Senate race too often. But the Senate Leadership Fund just did, quietly pulling up to $10 million out of North Carolina after already burning $30 million on Michael Whatley. That money was supposed to be a $71 million cushion. Now it's walking away, which means someone in Washington finally looked at the numbers and realized they were paying for a lost cause.
Michael Whatley was the wrong bet, and the GOP's biggest checkbook knows it. Whatley ran a painfully weak campaign, couldn't define himself before Democrats did it for him, and never connected with the state's working-class voters who decide these races. You can't fix a candidate with ads. You can't buy a personality. North Carolina is supposed to be safely red in a wave year, but the GOP is now spending its money in states that actually have a pulse.
To be fair, walking away is the smart move. Throwing good money after bad helps no one. But this is still an embarrassment for the party. The Democrats will spin it as a sign that their candidate is winning. They're half right. The bigger truth is that the NRSC and its allies handed a winnable state to a weak recruit and are now hoping nobody notices as they pack up early.
The lesson is older than politics itself: money can't replace message or muscle. North Carolina Republicans deserve a real candidate, not a shell built by consultants and paid for by out-of-state donors. The Senate Leadership Fund just proved it knows this too. The question is why they didn't figure it out before the first $30 million went up in smoke.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.