Fresh off a new poll showing him with a 14-point lead over Republican Michael Whatley in North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, former Gov. Roy Cooper rallied supporters Friday during a campaign stop in Asheville.
Released on Thursday, the Catawba College-YouGov poll shows Cooper leading the former Republican National Committee Chair Whatley, who bears an endorsement from President Donald Trump, 48% to 34%.
The last Democrat North Carolinians elected to the U.S. Senate was Kay Hagan in 2008, when Barack Obama turned the state blue. Despite promising polling numbers, Cooper said he knows he has a tough fight ahead of him.
“In almost 40 years, we’ve only had two Democratic U.S. Senators, and oftentimes the Democrat would be ahead, ahead, ahead, ahead, until they weren’t,” Cooper said. “So, what we need to do is to energize ourselves to make sure that we win this race.”
Cooper’s Asheville stop was one of several campaign events across North Carolina as part of his “Make Stuff Cost Less Tour,” where he has discussed the rising costs of healthcare, groceries and utilities. Over 150 supporters packed into the Buncombe County Democratic Party Headquarters to meet with the candidate and hear his plan to help flip the Senate in the Democrats’ favor.
Before Cooper, two Western North Carolina locals, small-business owner Namurah Blakely and working mom Christine Weinerth, took the stage to tell the crowd how the rising cost of living has affected their livelihoods in recent years.
“The cost of health care for our employees is up (and it’s up) for our own family,” Blakely said. “Meanwhile, we’re competing against national corporations with deep pockets, greater buying power and the ability to underbid local businesses, and we’ve spent decades investing in this community.”
Weinerth spoke after Blakely and wondered whether her college-age son would be part of the first generation of Americans to be financially worse off than their parents, citing the growing cost of living in North Carolina.
“Our grocery bill has gone up about $300 a month, our gas $200 a month and our utility bill, our Duke Energy bill has doubled since 2022. So this is unacceptable, and we need to make stuff cost less,” she said.
After the event, Cooper spoke with the Smoky Mountain News about how he would address Hurricane Helene recovery efforts, if elected, as the second anniversary of North Carolina’s costliest natural disaster approaches.
“We need to continue to fight for federal funds, so that the infrastructure of the area can be built up. When you’re talking about clean water, when you’re talking about reinforced roads, when you’re talking about bridges, many of them private — it’s a real challenge to make sure that Western North Carolina is fully recovered,” Cooper said.
Additionally, he said it is important for state leaders to announce that “Western North Carolina is open for business” to generate more tourism spending in the western counties that depend on those dollars, which dropped significantly in the western counties that rely on it post-Helene.
Cooper touted his 2023 passing of Medicaid expansion in North Carolina as one of his major achievements in tackling rising health care costs as governor and said Whatley’s support for the Trump administration’s Big Beautiful Bill, tariffs and the war in Iran are “adding costs to most everything people buy.”