Tarheel Republicans are touting a solid bench of political talent should Lara bow out. But for now, it’s her race.
As the shadow race to replace two-term Senator Thom Tillis begins to heat up, Republicans are hoping President Trump can unite the North Carolina GOP behind a consensus Republican candidate, avoiding a fractious and potentially damaging primary.
Tillis’s retirement announcement came as a surprise to even some of his supporters, given he’d formally kicked off his reelection bid late last year and he was actively fundraising for another term.
But key breaks with Trump complicated Tillis’s primary and general election paths.
The cracks began to emerge after Tillis strongly considered opposing Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as Trump’s defense secretary before eventually coming around; he then opposed Trump’s former pick to serve U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, Ed Martin; and, in his final break with the president, he voted against the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which is widely considered to be the signature domestic policy achievement of Trump’s second term.
Tillis opposed the bill over concerns that its Medicaid reform provisions will cut off coverage to deserving recipients.
“I didn’t get along with Tillis, and he resigned,” Trump told reporters last week. “Which I was happy about. He did us all a favor.”
Tillis had long faced grassroots challenges in North Carolina. Beyond his perennially low approval rating, he was censured by the state GOP in 2023 for his leadership on bipartisan immigration legislation as well as a bill to codify same-sex marriage. He squeaked out a reelection win in 2020, in part thanks to a sexting scandal that engulfed his Democratic opponent, military veteran Cal Cunningham.
But 2020 was also a presidential election year, and many pundits underestimate how much “being on the ballot with Trump really helped Tillis” that cycle, says J. Miles Coleman, an election analyst with Sabato’s Crystal Ball. The race will be close, he says, with or without North Carolina’s senior U.S. senator on the ballot.
“Before Tillis retired, it was a tossup. It’s a tossup now,” Coleman added.
Reeling from the Robinson Nightmare
Republicans who are eager to protect and hopefully expand their 53-seat Senate majority in the 2026 midterms are still reeling from the nightmare they experienced in 2024 under Mark Robinson, the state’s first black lieutenant governor who lost last year’s gubernatorial race by nearly 15 points after CNN ran a report alleging that the already controversial candidate made salacious comments on a porn site years ago. In an announcement first shared with National Review in January, Robinson said he would drop his lawsuit against CNN and that he planned to retire from politics.
Republicans see Robinson’s candidacy as an aberration from the state’s typically strong batch of statewide recruits and are quick to remind political reporters that gubernatorial races already tilt blue. After all, Trump won the state in 2016, 2020, and 2024. And for whatever reason, a hefty chunk of the North Carolina electorate prefers relatively moderate Democratic governors and relatively moderate conservative Republican U.S. senators, says Dallas Woodhouse, the former state director of the North Carolina Republican Party and current state director of American Majority.
He believes recent voter registration trends are a huge boon for Republicans. Woodhouse said there’s “no doubt” that former two-term Governor Roy Cooper would make a “formidable opponent” for Republicans in this Senate race if he runs. “But voter registration wise — math wise — that they are in much worse shape than they were” in 2008 when Democrat Kay Hagan notched their most recent Senate victory, he said.
‘Lara Trump’s Race’
Days after Tillis announced he wouldn’t seek reelection, the president quickly made clear that his daughter-in-law, North Carolina native and Republican National Committee (RNC) co-chair Lara Trump, is his preferred choice.
“She’s a great person, Lara Trump. I mean, that would always be my first choice,” the president told reporters last week. “But she doesn’t live there now but she’s there all the time, her parents are there, you know, she really knows North Carolina well.” He added that his daughter-in-law and son enjoy a “very good life” in Florida.
She also has two young kids and hosts a weekend Fox News show, meaning running for Senate would require her to move states and uproot her life in many ways. Political consultants are skeptical she will mount a bid, especially given that she decided against running for North Carolina Senate in 2022 and pulled herself from appointment consideration late last year for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Senate seat in her current home state of Florida, where it is much easier to win statewide as a Republican. (Governor Ron DeSantis appointed the state’s attorney general Ashley Moody to the seat instead.) But North Carolina Republicans are taking her consideration seriously.
If Lara Trump does want to run, it’s her race, says freshman Representative Pat Harrigan, whose name is being tossed around as a potential backup candidate by GOP insiders in the Tarheel State.
Republicans say that Harrigan, a military veteran with a telegenic family, has the background, political skill, and central-casting look that Trump may settle on. He’s playing the inside game by insisting in social media posts and interviews that the president’s daughter-in-law is the strongest choice in the primary.
“I’m definitely honored to have my name just even mentioned. I think it’s kind of proof positive that we’re doing a good job on behalf of our district right now, and people might want to see that take on a little bit of a larger role,” Harrigan told National Review in a brief interview last week. He said there’s “no question” that the president will make the decision on who the best Republican candidate in this race is. “And like I said yesterday, if Lara Trump decides that she wants to do this, I’ll be the first person to endorse her. I’ll be out there every day working to get her elected.”
Harrigan acknowledged that his team has “looked at the potential of Tillis not running, and I think given where he was and where the president was, it’s not much of a surprise that we’re here right now,” a nod to Tillis’s no-vote on the reconciliation bill and disagreements with the president’s administration picks. But again, he insisted, “this is Lara Trump’s race to decide whether she wants to run or not.”
One potential downside is that Harrigan has just six months of congressional experience under his belt, meaning fundraising may be tricky. That’s no small consideration in a pricey advertising state that’s expected to be one of the most competitive Senate races of the 2026 midterms.
There’s also Michael Whatley, former state party chairman who enjoys a strong donor network as current chairman of the RNC. A source close to Whatley insisted to National Review that he’s honored to serve as RNC chairman and that’s his focus heading into 2026. Sources speculate that he may have his eye on North Carolina’s 2028 gubernatorial race instead, though he’s expected to run for Senate this cycle if Trump believes he’s the strongest candidate.
Another name being floated in the president’s orbit is Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, a North Carolina native, Yale Law School graduate, and military veteran who ran unsuccessfully for the state’s eleventh congressional district in 2020.
Democratic Primary
For months, former Representative Wiley Nickel (D., N.C.) has been the only high-profile Democrat in the race. But Senate Democrats are eager to recruit former two-term Democratic Governor Roy Cooper as their preferred candidate. He’s never lost a race and has universal name recognition in the state given his involvement in North Carolina politics since the 1980s.
He is “strongly considering” it right now and plans to announce a decision in “the next few weeks,” a source close to Cooper tells NR.
Republicans are hopeful that the thought of serving as a freshman senator in the minority will deter 68-year-old from running for Senate — a job that would require him to move away from his home state and grandkids.
For more than a year now, North Carolina political consultants have told National Review that they expect first-term Attorney General Jeff Jackson to run for Senate in 2026. He has nothing to lose, considering he doesn’t have to give up his attorney general seat to run, and his calculus will likely depend on whether Cooper runs. An Afghanistan War veteran and former congressman, he’s thought by Republicans to be tough to beat.
But a source close to Jackson says “as it stands today, he has no intentions” of running and that he’s encouraging Cooper to throw his hat in the ring.
Also in the mix as potential candidates: Representative Don Davis (D., N.C), who said he is exploring a run; Lieutenant Governor Rachel Hunt; former Representative Kathy Manning (D., N.C.); former congressional candidate Dan McCready; and former EPA administrator Michael Regan, who also previously served as secretary of North Carolina’s department of environmental quality.