ASHEVILLE, September 18 — President Donald Trump’s remark at a Gastonia rally that he would steer additional Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funding to Western North Carolina only if Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley wins his race is landing badly among voters still recovering from Hurricane Helene, according to a Western Carolina University professor who assessed the fallout on Blue Ridge Public Radio.
Chris Cooper, speaking with reporter Felicia Sonmez in the studio, said the comments would be received “not well at all” by residents of a region contending with the long-term impacts of the storm. The episode injects a disaster-recovery dispute into a Senate contest that already tilts against the president’s party.
The Senate calculus
Whatley, the Republican nominee, is running against former Governor Roy Cooper, who holds a double-digit lead in recent public polling. Strategically, that is the number that matters most in this race, and it is the reason the Gastonia episode may prove less consequential than the immediate outcry suggests. Chris Cooper told Sonmez that Trump’s visit is “probably not ultimately going to mean that much” for Whatley’s overall chances.
The professor’s read is that the rally, however controversial, does not reset a contest in which the Democratic candidate has maintained a commanding polling edge.
Voting by mail
The interview also took up the legal fight over voting by mail, following a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that rejected the Trump administration’s attempts to restrict the practice. North Carolina was the first state to mail out ballots for the midterms. Even so, Chris Cooper highlighted that the total number of requested and accepted mail-in ballots is down compared with the 2022 midterm elections.
He projected that North Carolinians appear less inclined to vote by mail this cycle, expecting mail-in ballots to account for only 3% to 3.5% of the total votes cast.
The 11th District
On the state’s congressional matchups, Chris Cooper weighed in on North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, where Republican nominee Jennifer Balkcom faces Democrat Jamie Ager. The seat opened up following the retirement announcement of Congressman Chuck Edwards. The broader stakes run through all three threads.
A disaster-funding remark aimed at a recovering region, a Supreme Court ruling that leaves mail voting intact but apparently less used, and an open House seat in the mountains together sketch the terrain North Carolina voters will cross before the midterms. What to watch next is whether the mail-in numbers keep sliding as the state’s early-voting window opens, and whether the 11th District matchup draws the national money that an open seat typically invites.
