GOP Senate Candidate Don Brown: “I’m hearing all over the state that Republicans are not enthusiastic about Whatley.”

In a new interview with the News & Observer, Don Brown is claiming the MAGA lane in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate as the Republican base continues to lack excitement for DC insider and establishment candidate Michael Whatley.

As Brown campaigns on voter fraud conspiracy theories, it’s clear he’s too extreme for North Carolina.

Read more:

News & Observer: Opinion: Despite long odds, Don Brown thinks he can be the GOP’s Senate nominee in NC

Ned Barnett | December 9, 2025

• Brown, 65 of Waxhaw, is a fervent Trump supporter who stands by Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was rigged. “If you think Joe Biden got 80 million votes, I’ve got tropical land in the Aleutian Islands to sell you,” he said.
• “I’m hearing all over the state that Republicans are not enthusiastic about Whatley,” Brown said. “The Republicans who are behind him are doing so because Trump told them to.”
• Still, Brown may draw just enough attention to be a distraction for Whatley at a time when he needs to be fully focused on Cooper. The former GOP chairman needs to be careful. North Carolina’s Republican primary voters have shown a willingness to back kamikaze candidates based on their anti-establishment, MAGA views. Those voters put up hard-right lieutenant governors Dan Forest and Mark Robinson as gubernatorial candidates in 2020 and 2024. Forest lost by 4.5 percent. Scandal-plagued Robinson lost by more than 14 percent.
• Brown thinks he can gain traction by casting Whatley as an establishment Republican while presenting himself as a patriotic populist. 
• “I haven’t seen any plan that Whatley has. All I’ve heard is ‘Trump, Trump, Trump.’ We might love Trump, Trump, Trump, but ‘Trump, Trump, Trump’ is not a plan on how you are going to help North Carolinians afford the grocery bill at Harris Teeter or the Food lion. So there you go,” he said.
• Brown claims that polls show him to be as equally viable a candidate against Cooper as Whatley would be. Brown pointed to a November Carolina Journal poll that showed him losing a head-to-head contest against Cooper by roughly the same margin as Whatley. 

###