Cooper, Whatley spar over recovery czar role
With Tillis retiring, Democrats see what they describe as a rare opening to flip a seat in a state that has rejected their Senate candidates repeatedly in recent elections. But the contest has been overtaken by Hurricane Helene’s aftermath, and the two frontrunners have spent months trading blame over the storm’s recovery.
Cooper was governor when Helene arrived as a tropical storm over the state’s western half in late September 2024. Whatley, his Republican opponent, has accused him of mishandling the response in the months before he departed office. Cooper has countered with a line of attack drawn from President Trump’s own words: during a North Carolina visit shortly after returning to office, Trump said Whatley would be “in charge of making sure everything goes well” with the recovery. That single sentence has defined the contest.
Whatley’s campaign has insisted he was never given the title, but Cooper has used it repeatedly to portray his opponent as the official responsible for the region’s ongoing struggles. “He wasn’t named the recovery sidekick. He was named the recovery czar. His leadership and presence has been absent,” Zeb Smathers, the Democratic mayor of Canton, said.
The fight is being waged in a part of the state where voters across party lines agree the recovery has fallen short, said Christopher Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. “I don’t think it’s to anybody’s political benefit to be tapped as the person who was in charge of Helene recovery — Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian — doesn’t matter,” Cooper said. “People … in western North Carolina are fairly united that there wasn’t enough done and that Helene relief has been more of a failure than a victory. The question is who they blame for that.”
In Marshall, a Madison County town of 961 residents where the French Broad River crested 27 feet above flood level and inundated the historic courthouse, residents and officials describe a community that has physically recovered on its main street but remains hollowed out underneath. The town hall and post office were destroyed; the county plans to abandon the courthouse for a new complex to be built on higher ground, with money from the state general assembly and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “For rent” signs dot storefronts whose businesses never came back, and debris from the storm still lurks in some waterways.
Joel Friedman, the owner of Zuma Coffee, said sales at the cafe have returned but his margins are tighter because of inflation, and that several of his employees are struggling to afford higher healthcare premiums after Congress let temporary federal subsidies expire. Friedman said he has little hope for the November election. “I think we have an administration right now that’s rogue, and is going to do what they want to do, and living in a state with a Democrat governor is not very helpful right now,” he said. Aaron Haynie, Marshall’s Democratic mayor, said he has met Cooper several times and believed “his interest for North Carolina and its citizens is probably personal.”
Matthew Wechtel, a Republican commissioner in Madison County, said he was unaware of Whatley specifically helping his area and accused Cooper of being a “no-show,” even though Cooper visited Marshall about two weeks after the storm. “I don’t think Governor Cooper did much at all for Madison county, or for western North Carolina, when it came to storm recovery,” Wechtel said. “I think most of the stuff that came down came from the general assembly … and Governor Cooper just got out of the way and let it happen.”
A mountainous two dozen miles south of Marshall sits Canton, where the storm compounded years of economic decline. A paper mill that had operated for more than a century closed in 2023, eliminating 1,100 jobs, after Tropical Storm Fred had already flooded the town in 2021. “Everything was flooded. We lost homes, businesses, things that we had rebuilt from ‘21, gone again,” Smathers recalled.
Smathers said Canton’s recovery was further slowed by former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whom he described as Trump’s first homeland security secretary, and who required that she personally approve all spending over $100,000 by agencies including FEMA. The pace has since improved under new Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Whatley served on the FEMA Council Review Board, which evaluated the agency’s operations and earlier in 2026 released a report proposing to shift disaster response into the hands of state and local governments. DJ Griffin, a spokesperson for Whatley’s campaign, pointed to that role in disputing the “czar” framing. “If you look very, very, very, very closely, you’ll notice there’s no czar in that description. Not a czar of any sort,” Griffin said. Griffin said Whatley had collaborated with Republican members of the state’s federal delegation to bring North Carolina $10.75bn in hurricane relief, and added: “But the job is not yet done and Michael [Whatley] will continue speaking with local leaders about what they need help with.”
Cooper’s campaign pushed back, arguing in a statement that those federal dollars covered only about 15% of the storm’s damage, and noting that Cooper had signed two bills allocating more than $877m in state funds to hurricane relief before leaving office. “DC insider Michael Whatley has completely failed in his role as federal recovery czar,” the spokesperson said.
In Canton, Republican County Commissioner Brandon Rogers said he remembered Cooper calling shortly after the storm and arranging for water, food and insulin to be delivered by helicopter — a gesture he appreciated even though he said he would not vote for Cooper in November. “I appreciate you bringing the check,” Rogers said he told Cooper during the visit. “However, a lot of our other politics may not line up.” The two men laughed about the disagreement, Rogers said. “That doesn’t mean we couldn’t work together.”
The contest carries consequences beyond the state. North Carolina has not elected a Democrat to the US Senate since 2008, and Republicans have used their dominance of the state legislature to rewrite state law and redraw congressional maps over the objections of Democratic Gov. Josh Stein. Democratic leaders have placed the state among a small group of red states where they see a pickup opportunity, and recent polls have shown Cooper leading Whatley. In 2024, Trump seized on the storm’s devastation to accuse then-President Joe Biden’s administration of bungling the disaster response and went on to win the state by 51%.