SWANO, NORTH CAROLINA — When President Donald Trump made his first second-term trip outside of Washington, D.C., to this Buncombe County town, he brought Michael Whatley with him to tour the region devastated by Hurricane Helene.

The plan was for Whatley, then chairman of the Republican National Committee, to travel with him to the next stop in fire-scorched California, as part of his tour of disaster zones in both states. But after their stop in Swano, where Trump was greeted warmly by residents of the hurricane-ravaged Appalachian hill country, Trump left without him.

Recommended Stories

• The grim news about jobs
• What the immigration raids are about
• Nine Line takes being part of something bigger to the next level

Not because it was planned, but because he placed Whatley, who grew up in the hills of these Blue Ridge Mountains, in charge of getting FEMA on track after months of delays had left the region tattered beyond recognition in some places.

Whatley said it became evident as they made their way here to Swano that whatever the Biden administration had been doing since September wasn’t hitting the mark. It was also evident, said Whatley, that Trump was livid.

“The President was like, ‘Nothing’s happened. There is still devastation and destruction as far as the eye can see. What in the world has the Biden administration and (Roy) Cooper been doing?’” Whatley recalled Trump’s reaction to what he saw in the lack of progress in the damaged region.

“That made him viscerally angry, at which point he turned to me and said, ‘Michael, you need to help. You need to be our point man making sure that we get these resources into North Carolina,’” Whatley explained.

Whatley said the moment Trump made those comments he hit his phone and started making calls and not just to FEMA but all of the agencies that needed to make things right here, “From transportation to agriculture to HUD and the SBA; to make sure the whole of government response doesn’t fail people when they need them.”

Seven months later, as the one-year anniversary of the devastation that unfolded here in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene nears, pops of warm reds and oranges have begun tipping the ridgelines. Long stretches of the Blue Ridge Skyway are now open. Whatley is no longer the chair of the RNC and is instead running for the open U.S. Senate seat held by retiring Republican Sen. Tom Tillis (R-NC).

His opponent, Democrat Roy Cooper, 68, has spent the past 38 years in elected office, most recently serving as governor of the Tar Heel state for two terms, then previously as the state attorney general for just short of 16 years.

Once again, Whatley is in the eye of a storm: the gruesome murder of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska while sitting on a light-rail train dressed in her pizza parlor uniform, looking at her phone, when suddenly, a man sitting behind her stood up, took his knife and violently stabbed the Ukrainian refugee.

A video captured by the security camera showed the brutal murder and heightened the scrutiny of big-city justice systems that had allowed the alleged killer, Decarlos Brown Jr., to be released without bail in January after repeatedly calling 911 from a hospital claiming people were trying to control him.

The video is brutal, graphic, and horrid to watch; within seconds of being stabbed, Zarutska collapses and loses a fatal amount of blood. Someone tries to stem the flow, others scream, some pray. It is too late. She dies.

Whatley is rocked by the footage. He is vocal about the consequences he believes Cooper, in his decades in statewide government, put in place that led to this. 

“I’m running against a guy who is very, very soft on crime,” he said, adding he wants to know why someone with Brown’s record was walking free after being arrested over and over again.

He also wants to know why there was a media blackout and why the Charlotte mayor’s response was more sympathetic and compassionate to the killer than the victim.

“Even now the Democratic leadership across the state is totally silent, except they’re saying that woe is this guy, the community let him down. Well, he got arrested 14 different times. He should have never been on the street,” said Whatley, who lives outside of Charlotte.

Late Tuesday evening, Cooper finally addressed the murder with a post on X from his official campaign account about the crime. The post comes weeks after it occurred and five days after the video footage became widely available and the story had been heavily reported in North Carolina.

Cooper called the murder “a horrible tragedy” and said that his opponent “supported cutting funding to law enforcement in North Carolina.”

It is an interesting statement to blame law enforcement funding cuts given that there has been plenty of funding to arrest and incarcerate Brown 14 times. Also, there is no evidence that Whatley has supported defunding local law enforcement. His campaign confirmed that has not been the case.

The race between Whatley and Cooper has the latter almost taking on the role of the incumbent, having served for nearly three decades as a statewide official. In this way, it is similar to the 2024 race between Republican David McCormick and Democrat Bob Casey Jr.

Whatley’s political experiences outside of chair of the RNC  and the state party include serving in the George W. Bush White House and as Chief of Staff to former U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole.  

His roots in North Carolina are widespread, but he says they began here in Western North Carolina in Watauga County, shaping who he is today.

“I grew up in Blowing Rock. It is a tiny little town on the Blue Ridge Parkway. When I lived there, there were 534 people. We had one stoplight. It’s a little bit bigger now. I think they have over a thousand,” he says.

His father was a CPA and his mother was the librarian for the town. 

“I played sports and went to church, and I had a job working at a golf course and worked in restaurants, and really had a pretty traditional middle-class upbringing in the mountains. It gave me a work ethic. I got my first full-time job at 14,” he explained.

Whatley said he put himself through college and grad school here in the state. 

“I did it by working two, three jobs at a time. And North Carolina and the United States have really given me an opportunity to put myself through school, build a career, marry a great lady, and raise a great family. We live outside of Charlotte now, but Blowing Rock is always going to be home.”

Whatley says the race between him and Cooper is going to be about who has the better ideas, who wants to take the people of the state to a better place, and who will lead with purpose.

It is about drawing a contrast between him and Cooper. 

“But it is also about defining North Carolina values. Roy Cooper has vetoed three different bills to keep boys out of girls’ sports and men out of women’s locker rooms. He is also soft on crime. That is not what our communities and our families need whatsoever,” he explained.

As for national security issues, Whatley says North Carolina is the tip of the spear when it comes to protecting our interests and our allies around the world. 

“We’ve got more men and women in uniform, veterans, and military families than any other state per capita. And making sure that they have what they need to carry out their mission is going to be a tremendously important issue for me.”

The race, he suspects, will come down to low-propensity voters. 

“How do we get them off the couch? Because in a midterm election cycle, every voter is a low-propensity voter by definition. The key is we’ve got to get more Trump voters to the polls for me than he gets Kamala Harris voters to the polls for him.”

WE MET IRYNA ZARUTSKA’S MURDER WITH TERRIFYING INDIFFERENCE

What will motivate them? Whatley says a message that makes them feel part of something bigger than themselves. 

“Showing up matters. Visiting and listening to people in all 100 counties matters,” he said.