Out-managed and Out-hustled: an autopsy on Campaign 2026

I knew Tuesday was going to be bad for the conservative side.  I just didn’t see it as this bad.

Apparently, the pollsters got caught off guard as well.  The Real Clear Politics (RCP) average of all polling on the Senate race found Roy Cooper with a 11-point lead over Michael Whatley.

Cooper actually won by 19.6 points.  Reality was worse than what the polls were telling us.  

That’s the worst loss for a NCGOP US Senate nominee in more than 50 years.  (Elizabeth Dole – with her 8.5 percent loss in 2008 – was the previous record-holder.). Scandal-plagued Mark Robinson lost his 2024 battle with Josh Stein by 14.6 percent.

The slavishly liberal driveby media is dying – just dying —  to pin this all on the country being disgusted with Donald Trump and the *extreme* MAGA movement.

Donald Trump and his political team  DO deserve a lot of the blame for the GOP disaster in North Carolina and in other parts of the country.  They went overboard putting their thumb on the scale – practically cancelling primaries and hand-picking nominees from DC.  Michael Whatley struggled to get reelected as NCGOP state chairman.  WHAT made anyone think he’d be a commanding, imposing candidate for United States Senate? 

I can think of five or six other leaders who could have performed better than Whatley did.  The crowd running Whatley’s campaign all hailed from DC.  They did not know the landscape where they’d do battle.  *But – hey – they were from DC, and therefore knew more than anyone.*

I saw polling which IDed affordability and inflation as THE key issues for voters.  Cooper talked that up and framed his campaign around those issues.  Whatley?  He talked about crime. Crime is important, but US senators don’t have a lot of impact on state- and local-level crime fighting.  Crime has been around a while.  These high gas and grocery prices have not.

I heard a politico ID Roy Cooper as a mediocre candidate who is exceptionally well-managed.  I agree.  He has a great political team around him.  Of course, the ineptitude of state Republicans has made their life easy for the last 40 years.

I would have hit Cooper for encouraging an economic boycott of his own state.  He did just that when running for governor in 2016. The GOP governor and GOP legislature had passed a law banning men from women’s locker rooms and restrooms.  Cooper publicly encouraged out-of-staters to cancel events in North Carolina and to put business expansion plans to NC on hold until the law got repealed.  

Roy Cooper cares about your economic well-being?  Well, he didn’t in 2016.  And he certainly puts your well-being in second or third-place if one of his favorite woke protected groups is having a hissy fit. 

And let’s not forget the state crime lab.  Localities were having to contract with private forensic labs so they could get evidence processed in time for court.  Cooper was in charge of the state crime lab at the time.  Roy’s managerial ineptitude was costing taxpayers all kinds of extra money.

We heard nothing about either of those two things during the recently-completed campaign.  Of course, you have to actually offer people something in order to be a credible candidate.  Roy Cooper has been a state senator, the state attorney general and governor.  THAT is a resumé.

Michael Whatley is a schlub who has been little more than a bureaucrat, a political hack, and a bag-man for special interests.  He apparently had no issues he was passionate about.  He had no plan other than to *help* Trump.

Roy Cooper actually embraced and reached out to his base and beyond.  On the right, we were told: “Whatley is what you get. Don’t like it? Kiss off.”

I remember – during the alleged primary we were supposed to be having – where many a NCGOPe stalwart sneered at us and said: “Michael Whatley is the only one who can beat Roy Cooper.  Michael Whatley is the only one who can raise the money to compete with Cooper.”

(I’m tempted to go back and dig up a lot of those quotes and ID those *wise* folks who helped set the stage for Tuesday’s disaster. )

Well, he did neither of those things.  During his time in Raleigh, the NCGOP was propped up with a lot of RNC pass-through funds. Whatley and his pals took credit for it all, of course.

Whatley’s weak performance at the top of the ticket set the stage for dooming the rest of the GOP slate.  Cooper figured out he didn’t need a lot of the money and sent $17 million off to other members of the Democrat ticket.  The rout of Whatley begat a rout of Supreme Court hopeful Sarah Stevens which begat a rout of our three Court of Appeals candidates. And so on and so-on.

The NCGOP’s US House collapse somewhat mirrored what I projected in one of my earlier posts.  The Democrats had an amazing get-out-the-vote operation.  I saw NOTHING from the GOP side.

State Democrats were in bright-red Moore County a year before the election organizing and door-knocking.  Local Republicans struggled to get three people to show up on a Saturday for cold-calling and door-knocking.

Laurie Buckhout was hand-picked by Team Trump for two straight election cycles to run in the 1st congressional district. She was air-dropped in from DC and her campaign managers were all based in DC.  There was a primary in 2026 that included an outstanding option – Carteret County sheriff Asa Buck.  Buck got started late and came in a close-second to Buckhout in a five-way race.  His campaign and the primary itself exposed some serious Buckhout weaknesses that the Trump team just ignored. The 1st was gerrymandered to favor a Republican, but Buckhout and her DC-based campaign team still managed to lose it.

Over in the 6th congressional district, congressman Addison McDowell was installed in 2024 into a safe seat by senator Ted Budd and Team Trump.  McDowell was a DC lobbyist – brother to a renowned DC and Raleigh lobbyist and Phil Berger ally – who had been plucked out of obscurity. As with Buckhout, DC put its big thumb on the scale and gave him some protection.  But, this time, a blue wave aided by a weak top of the GOP ticket caught up to young McDowell.

In March, Team Trump intervened  on behalf of Phil Berger in his primary against sheriff Sam Page.  As we all know, Page still won.  We also know that Team Trump cleared the field and put its thumb on the scale for Mark Robinson in 2024.  *And we all know how well that worked.*

I’ve been hearing griping all over the country from folks angry about Trump’s political team forcing weak and less-than-desirable candidates down voters’ throats.  (Talk to some folks just south of out border.) So, clearly we weren’t the only ones.

It sounds like there is a lesson here: Allow primaries to happen as they may.  Stop putting your thumb on the scale.  Let local people figure out what they want. Once the primaries are done, step in and help the local choice to the victory circle.  (It’s worked well for a long time.  How hard is that?)