New reporting from Carolina Forward has resurfaced the turbulence of Michael Whatley’s 2023 re-election as NCGOP Chair, after which “three Republican activists sued the party” for putting their thumb on the scale for Whatley.

The friction between Whatley and his own Republican base shows that not even GOP voters support having a DC insider leading their party. Read more:

Carolina Forward: The Man Behind the Curtain

November 4, 2025

• Whatley has spent his political career deep in the national Republican party establishment, while never holding an elected office himself. When we examine that activity, Whatley comes across as a shrewd political operator and campaign operative, willing to bend and even break his own rules to win an election.
• In 2023, after Republicans re-elected Whatley to lead the North Carolina Republican Party, three Republican activists sued the party for violating the party’s own election rules. The suit alleged that, despite Whatley’s claims that “having machines that do not and cannot connect with the internet” is a massive component of election integrity efforts, the NC Republicans launched a “mobile phone application which allowed votes to be cast from outside the Convention floor in the contested Chair election.”
• This lawsuit wasn’t even decided on the merits. Instead of fighting the suit and its claims in court, the NCGOP had it tossed out on procedural grounds, claiming not innocence, but that the plaintiffs lacked standing, or the ability to bring such a case before the court in the first place, and that they didn’t establish a claim the court could adequately redress. 

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