Trying to catch a behind-the-scenes peek at the man running the Republican National Committee these days isn’t easy.
The former RNC general counsel and past leader of the North Carolina GOP doesn’t share much about himself or his daily schedule publicly.
Michael Whatley, 55, was hand-picked for the role by former President Donald Trump and took the helm in March. Another Trump-orbit pick—the former president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump—serves as co-chair.
In speaking with The Epoch Times, allies of Mr. Whatley alluded to a personal work ethic that keeps him fully on a job until it’s done to his satisfaction.
It’s a kind of no-quit attitude, they said, that spills over to staffers caught up in a contagious enthusiasm for the mission of promoting conservative leaders and policy.
Philip Thomas, who served in numerous roles for the North Carolina Republican Party, learned that lesson in 2020. The state GOP was ramping up for the presidential election and other races including the Senate. Mr. Whatley, then chairman of the state party, often would not leave the office until midnight or later, Mr. Thomas recalled.
So, in keeping with his parents’ advice to never leave work before the boss, that meant late nights for him, as well.
Mission: Victory
A key goal this election cycle is to help the GOP win back control of the U.S. Senate, Mr. Whatley said. Republicans currently hold 49 seats, while Democrats hold 47. But four independents caucus with Democrats, giving that party a 51–49 majority.Expanding the party’s slim majority in the U.S. House also has become a key focus of the RNC chief. Republicans now hold 219 of 435 seats. There are three House seats left vacant by members who’ve stepped down.
Mr. Whatley already has helped deliver victories for Republicans in his home state.
Under his leadership in 2020, North Carolina Republicans helped President Trump eke out a 1 percent margin of victory there over his challenger. In the nationwide contest, however, candidate Joe Biden took the White House with 306 electoral votes to President Trump’s 232.
Now, as chairman of the national GOP’s main fundraising and campaign committee, Mr. Whatley is ready for a rematch. He speaks often about how former President Trump plays “offense.” President Biden, he says, is on “defense.”
Pollsters show a close race between former President Trump and President Biden. A New York Times average of polls on FiveThirtyEight shows former President Trump leading in Arizona and Nevada by 4 percentage points; in Wisconsin by 1 percentage point; in Michigan and Pennsylvania by 2 percentage points; and in Georgia and and Mr. Whatley’s home state by 5 percentage points.
The hope of claiming more victories for conservatives propelled Mr. Whately to the top of the national party’s leadership, succeeding Ronna McDaniel. Her more-than-seven-year tenure consisted of “losing” the House, the White House, and the Senate, others in the party loudly complained.
And she was blamed widely when the predicted “red wave” of Republican victories failed to crest in 2022.
In February, the RNC lagged behind the Democratic National Committee in fundraising, with $11.3 million in campaign funds available compared to the DNC’s $26.5 million, according to Federal Election Commission records.
That month, former President Trump soured on Ms. McDaniel, telling Fox News, “There'll probably be some changes made” at the RNC.
As the presumptive Republican nominee for president, he reigns as the party’s unofficial leader. His opinions cause things to happen.
Soon after the former president’s pronouncement, Ms. McDaniel announced plans to step down.
A longtime Republican operative, she’s the granddaughter of a former Michigan governor. She’s also the niece of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a former Massachusetts governor who lost his 2012 presidential bid against President Barack Obama.
Political insiders buzzed about who might replace her.
Then former President Trump made it clear he wanted Mr. Whatley. He also endorsed his daughter-in-law as co-chair. The two took over RNC leadership on March 8.
Election Integrity Effort
A top priority for Mr. Whatley and Ms. Trump is election integrity.He was part of the legal team for Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush—the governor of Texas and son of former President George H.W. Bush—during the 2000 election.
In a dramatic recount that closely examined the “chads” of ballots, the hotly contested results ultimately put the younger Bush on top.
A chad is a fragment punched out of a piece of paper. The resulting hole in the paper indicates a selection. In the recount, battles were fought over “pregnant chads,“ so-named because they bulged but weren’t perforated, and ”hanging chads” still partially attached to the ballot.
The chad debate ended with the Texas governor defeating Vice President Al Gore, the Democrat nominee, by a little more than 500 votes. Mr. Gore conceded in mid-December.
Being a member of the Bush team during the recount revealed the importance of election integrity to Mr. Whatley, he told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.
“We are now running the largest election integrity program in history based on a lot of lessons that we learned back in 2000,” he said.
The initiative is called the Protect the Vote Tour. This includes pursuing legal action to ensure electoral honesty and transparency at the ballot box.
“You have to be in the room when people are voting,” he said.
He wants to motivate others to care. He wants to show them why they need to pay attention to election integrity—but not in a panicky way.
He describes himself as a “low-key guy.”
Laurie Buckhout, a retired colonel in the U.S. Army now running for Congress in North Carolina, agrees with that characterization.
Team Player in the Trenches
Mr. Whatley—described by others as a hard worker with ingenuity—is what’s needed in GOP leadership now, Mr. Thomas and three other former colleagues told The Epoch Times.They praised the new RNC leader as a likable, disciplined go-getter. They said he’s all business when it comes to getting jobs done, whether that’s winning elections or ensuring fair elections.
He’s “a team player“ who ”didn’t create conflict or controversy,” said Andrew Wheeler, who led the Environmental Protection Agency during the Trump administration.
They worked together when Mr. Whatley was a staffer with the U.S. Senate’s Clean Air, Climate Change, and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee. That work forced Mr. Whatley to work cooperatively with Democrats.
“He didn’t create conflict or controversy,” Mr. Wheeler recalled. “He got stuff done.
“A lot of times people can be very partisan. He understands politics,” he said.
“But he’s somebody that I would say people enjoy working with.”
He’s also “a very driven individual, is very goal-oriented, and an individual who understands the task in front of him, and is driven like no other leader I’ve ever met,” said Jason Simmons, who took over as leader of the North Carolina GOP.
Mr. Simmons said his predecessor “was very engaged with the grassroots” statewide “knocking on doors and helping with the voter turnout.
“Every election day, he would be out traveling the state, visiting polling locations, visiting with the poll readers and observers, visiting with county leadership.”
Getting into the trenches, instead of staying planted behind a desk, is what makes Mr. Whatley successful, said A.J. Daoud, who serves on the cabinet of the North Carolina GOP chairman.
It’s rare to have a state chairman “involved in street-level campaigning” like that, Mr. Daoud said.
And Mr. Whatley answers his phone and returns calls, he said.
“If he’s needed somewhere, he’s there.”
That energy helped the North Carolina GOP in “raising more money than we had in years in the party,” made for “incredible” communication within the party, and inspired more people to get involved, he said.
‘On the Road’
While leading the North Carolina GOP, Mr. Whatley often climbed behind the wheel of his pick-up truck and rumbled off to county Republican events, hitting every district at least three times.Those visits surprised some local party activists, who’d traditionally been somewhat disconnected from higher-ups in the state party, Mr. Daoud said.
“He is going to be probably one of the best RNC chairmen ever because he’s not going to sit on a throne or behind his desk,” he said.
“He’s going to be on the road meeting people, organizing people, getting people motivated.”
It’s all part of the mission to motivate the GOP faithful to help watch elections.
In North Carolina, Mr. Whatley brought on hundreds of lawyers and thousands of poll watchers to oversee elections. Before that, Mr. Daoud said, the North Carolina GOP had “a staff of maybe 10 lawyers sitting in Raleigh and you would have to call them.”
To party volunteers, the new way felt proactive, not reactive, Mr. Thomas said.
And that made “a massive difference” in successfully pushing back against suspected “illegal election administration processes,” he said.
Before Mr. Whatley assumed leadership of the North Carolina GOP, Immigration and Customs Enforcement alleged that 19 illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 elections in the Tar Heel State. To keep watch for unlawful voting in 2020, Mr. Whatley dispatched attorneys and election observers to almost all of North Carolina’s 100 counties.
With those ramped up efforts to watch polls, there was more confidence in the results of the 2020 election in the state, Mr. Thomas said.
President Trump won there by 74,483 votes, about 1.34 percentage points.
During the 2022 election, there were 155 attorneys throughout the state who were “on call to handle any election irregularities,” Mr. Daoud said.
Winning Record
In addition to ensuring fair elections, party operatives look to state leaders to deliver victories at home.And during Mr. Whatley’s tenure in North Carolina, the GOP reclaimed a supermajority in both chambers of the state legislature. The state’s Supreme Court flipped to a more conservative interpretation of the law, part of his 14–0 record in judicial races.
GOP lawyers kept a close watch on election recounts where Republicans prevailed by the thinnest of margins.
They were key, Mr. Simmons said, in “making sure that ballots that should be counted are counted and protecting the integrity and the transparency of the process.”
The party lost the 2020 gubernatorial race when Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, held on to his post, but Mr. Whatley shouldn’t be blamed, Mr. Simmons said. The sitting governor had the advantage of being an incumbent and having more money to spend on the race.
In a May 24 statement, the Democratic National Committee accused Mr. Whatley of being an “election denier.”
“Donald Trump hand-picked Michael Whatley and Lara Trump to lead the RNC because, above all, he knows he can count on them to push lies about the 2020 election and back him up as he refuses to commit to accepting this November’s results,” DNC spokeswoman Aida Ross said.
Mr. Whatley says, moving forward, it’s important to put in processes that ensure elections that don’t raise questions.
Before election day, the RNC will “make sure that we have the right rules and regulations in place to ensure fair, accurate, secure, and transparent elections,” he told The Epoch Times.
He wants to ensure states allow only U.S. citizens to vote. He wants to eliminate ballot drop boxes. He wants states to have “clean voter rolls,” not cluttered with names of deceased people and people who’ve moved. And he wants all mail-in ballots to have a notarized signature.
He also wants Republicans in place at all polling locations when ballots are cast and counted. The RNC aims to recruit more than 100,000 people nationwide to serve as poll workers and volunteer poll watchers.
“Poll watchers observe and report potential issues which may arise at polling locations and ballot tabulation centers,” the RNC’s Protect the Vote website states. “Poll workers play an official role in administering the election at the precinct level.”
Goals for the RNC
During his interview with The Epoch Times, Mr. Whatley talked about his mission to connect face-to-face with voters all over the country ahead of the November election.“Everything that we do in North Carolina and now nationally is going to focus on those two things”—encouraging conservatives to vote and protecting the ballot, he said.
“The only thing that we have right now is the work in front of us.”
He sees another top goal for the RNC.
It’s having “those five-minute conversations” with urban, rural, suburban, Republican, and undecided voters, he said.
It’s especially important as an increasing number of Hispanic, black, and Asian-American voters are leaving the Democrat Party. He'd like to bring them into the Republican fold.
“If you have a five-minute conversation with an undecided voter, they are 6 percent more likely to go vote and vote for your candidate,” he said.
His plan includes working “very hard” to appeal to voters in inner cities that have long been under Democrat control.
“This is about [talking to people about] voting based on things like jobs and the economy, education, security, safety,” he said. “These affect every family, whether they’re white, they’re black, or Hispanic, but also whether they’re rural, urban, or suburban. Everybody wants to vote based on the candidate that is putting solutions on the table that affect them.”
Though he declined to share specifics about his typical daily schedule, Mr. Whatley has been traveling nationwide, sometimes with former President Trump. Officially, the GOP candidate for president will be nominated at the convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 15–18.
It will be a “world-class production,” Mr. Whatley said.
The RNC will continue to support down-ballot Republicans, as well, Mr. Whatley said. The organization collaborates with the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Both raise money for candidates and other election-related ventures.
Very Young Republican
It was Jan. 20, 1981, when Mr. Whatley realized that he was, deep in his heart, a Republican. He was 12.President Ronald Reagan was inaugurated that day. Meanwhile, Iranian Islamic extremists released American hostages who’d been held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days.
The new president’s mantra of “Peace through Strength” inspired the young North Carolina native.
A few years later in high school, he was a volunteer on the successful reelection campaign for Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).
He earned a bachelor’s in history from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and a master’s in religion from Wake Forest University. At the University of Notre Dame, he earned a master’s in theology and a law degree.
But politics continued to draw him.
He worked as an in-house lawyer for former Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.). Then he spent two years at the U.S. Department of Energy during the Bush administration as principal deputy assistant secretary.
He returned to Capitol Hill to serve as staff director and chief counsel for the Clean Air, Climate Change and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee in the Senate. He also worked as chief of staff for former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.).
After that, Mr. Whatley worked for more than a decade as executive vice president of the Consumer Energy Alliance, a lobbying group that advocates for affordable fossil fuel-based energy. He also became a partner at HBW Resources, a self-described “government affairs, advocacy, public relations, and communications firm exclusively focused on traditional and renewable energy, environment, conservation, technology, and transportation issues.”
In June 2019, he was elected chairman of the North Carolina GOP. While in that role, he also served as counsel to the RNC.
Mr. Whatley is married and a father of two sons, but declined to reveal anything about his personal life, other than one detail. He shared where his allegiance lies during his home state’s biggest rivalry between Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
It’s complicated.
He roots against Duke. But that’s because he’s a bigger fan of Duke’s rival, his alma mater, Wake Forest.
But, he said, the upcoming election and America’s future is no game.
“We truly are living in a world that’s an example of elections having consequences.”
He believes “we need to return to the strength of Donald Trump’s tenure,” he said. “And it’s going to make a huge impact for every family in America.”
After all, “college sports is a lot of fun, but politics really truly matters.”
