The race to replace outgoing US Sen. Thom Tillis, R-NC, is set to break records. Political strategists anticipate it will be the most expensive US Senate race in history — between $600 million and $800 million will likely be spent, according to Politico. Currently, the 2022 Georgia Senate runoff race holds the title of most expensive Senate race, with $472 million spent by the candidates and outside groups.
Former North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper will face the winner of the Republican primary. Michael Whatley, former chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party and Republican National Committee, secured President Donald Trump’s endorsement against Navy veteran Don Brown in the primary election. Many observers think Whatley is likely to cruise to the general election.
A lack of competitive Senate races nationwide, North Carolina’s history of expensive campaigns and the current political climate all contribute to the level of expected spending, according to political experts who spoke to Carolina Public Press.
Money talks, loudly and often. Voters should anticipate an avalanche of political ads as candidates attempt to convince their supporters to get out and vote, sell their vision to persuadable voters and weaken their opponents.
One of few Senate battlegrounds
The level of anticipated spending on North Carolina’s Senate election starts with a simple math problem: national donors have a lot of money to burn, and very few places to effectively spend it.
Fewer truly competitive Senate races are expected in 2026 than would have been the case a few decades ago. Voters have geographically sorted themselves based on their political ideologies. State politics has also become more nationalized, and as a result, US Senate race outcomes match presidential election results most of the time.
Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer said three battleground Senate races are scheduled in 2026 — in Maine, Georgia and North Carolina.
Currently, Democrats effectively hold 47 seats in the US Senate, with the votes of two Independents. Republicans have 53 seats. To stand any chance of gaining a majority, Democrats have to keep Georgia and Michigan, pick up North Carolina and Maine and upset at least one Republican-leaning contest in Ohio, Iowa or Texas, Bitzer said.
Republicans, on the other hand, need to stand their ground. With so few seats to fight over, much of the national donor money will flow to North Carolina.
A costly precedent has also been set in North Carolina Senate races, said Douglas Wilson, a political consultant who has worked for Hagan, former President Barack Obama, Jeff Jackson and other state Democrats.
In 2014, the race between Tillis, then Speaker of the NC House, and incumbent US Sen. Kay Hagan, D-NC, for a spot in the North Carolina congressional delegation was the most expensive of the cycle, at $121 million in spending.
The next time around, in 2020, groups supporting Tillis and Democrat Cal Cunningham spent $296 million, enough for third-highest spending. While Tillis won that race easily against the former state senator, the race had been close before a sex scandal undermined Cunningham’s support in the final weeks before the election.
But the 2026 race for an open seat is on another level. Wilson blames that on the current political climate, economic headwinds and the threat of losing Medicaid expansion in North Carolina — “ground zero for health care.”
Campaign finance
Past and future Supreme Court rulings may also contribute to spending levels. In 2010, the Supreme Court made a landmark ruling in Citizens United that effectively opened the floodgates to unlimited outside spending on elections.
The court ruled that corporations had a First Amendment free speech right to spend money as they wished, as long as it didn’t flow directly to candidates. As a result, corporations and outside groups can launch political ads, get out the vote campaigns and more on behalf of favored candidates without financial barriers.
More recently, the Supreme Court heard a case that would loosen restrictions on certain political party spending. If the court sides with the political parties, as expected, it would probably extend the amount by which the Senate race in North Carolina breaks spending records, Heberlig said.
“But the parties already have quite a bit of flexibility,” he added. “It won't be a revolutionary change.”
These rulings impact who is backing candidates. Campaign finance watchdog and former Democracy North Carolina Executive Director Bob Hall thinks it’s for the worse.
“The whole political process is warped by private money,” he said. “It’s a public election, but unfortunately, private money has an enormous impact, and it's just the result of Supreme Court decisions that protect the rights of campaign spenders.”
There may be a point of diminishing return; a time when candidates have squeezed as much as they can with their money, and it becomes less effective.
“When you have so many ads, it just becomes noise to the average voter,” Heberlig said. “Practically speaking, what all these groups are doing is just offsetting the spending and advertising of the other side. You don't want to leave the other side to dominate the air wars, because then people are only going to receive information from one perspective, and therefore are more likely to go with that.”
Early bird gets the worm
As soon as Tillis announced his departure from Congress, all sights were set on Cooper. Among politicos, it wasn’t so much a matter of whether the former governor would run for U.S. Senate, but when he would declare his intention to do so.
He did so early. On July 28, Cooper announced that he would run for office — nearly a year and a half before the 2026 general election, and four months before he could officially file to run in North Carolina.
Three days later, Whatley followed suit.
By the end of September, both had garnered millions of dollars to support their campaigns. According to the latest Federal Election Commission filings, Cooper’s campaign and associated committees raised about $14.5 million, while Whatley’s raised $5.8 million, by the end of September.
Starting early offers an advantage, said Eric Heberlig, UNC-Charlotte political science professor.
“Early spending gives you the ability to define yourself positively and your opponent negatively before people have any other sources of information,” he said. “If you can do that over long periods of time, that means people get more hardened in the information they have and are less persuadable as we get closer to the election.”
Cooper is already well-known in North Carolina, as a two-term governor, four-term attorney general and longtime state lawmaker. His reputation will make it harder for Republicans to change people’s perception, Heberlig said.
However, Whatley is relatively unknown to voters, despite holding very powerful positions in the Republican Party. Cooper may be able to use Whatley’s lower name recognition, as well as the tendency for the president’s party to perform poorly in midterm elections, to his advantage, Heberlig added.
Despite those handicaps, Whatley’s certainly still a “formidable” opponent, Wilson said. After all, Trump won North Carolina three times, if only by a small margin.
“Republicans have a pretty good infrastructure here from their wins in General Assembly races, judicial races and statewide races, so he's going to be able to run a pretty aggressive campaign,” Wilson said.
The primary election could help Whatley “warm up” and test out messaging before the general election, he added.
At the end of the day, it probably won’t matter who raises or spends more money; it’s about how candidates target their spending that makes the difference, Wilson said.
If it were up to him, he’d focus on a broad media spectrum, from traditional television advertisements to local and national podcasts to social media platforms.
“I would also be physically present in a lot of these communities that are suffering economically, and present a plan that folks can understand and grab hold to,” he said. “If you can do that, you can win this race.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
