Dem former North Carolina Gov Roy Cooper, who won twice in a Red State with Donald Trump on the same ballot, raised $14.5 million last quarter in his bid to replace retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis, Politico reports on a total more than doubling the $5.8 million haul of his likely opponent former RNC chair Mike Whatley, who has never won an election, much less ran in one.
Unless you count all the members of the Republican National Committee and the North Carolina GOP voting for him to be their chairs. Those were election-ish situations. What’s funnier here is that Axios sold Whatley as this absolute god of fundraising and since sucking off the moneyed GOP donor class is kind of Axios’s beat you would think that at the very least there’d be something like parity in the race, but for the moment it looks like Lara Trump’s replacement isn’t off to a great start.