Michael Whatley’s path to winning the U.S. Senate race has always run through tearing down Democrat Roy Cooper.
So what might serve as a wrecking ball?
Some Republicans have floated re-litigating Cooper’s COVID-19 restrictions. But that was six years ago, and was already decided in the 2020 governor’s race — which Cooper won. That’s a non-starter.
Hitting Cooper over his support for transgender rights has potential, especially after Donald Trump’s successful “They/Them” ad in the fall of 2024. But is that enough to overcome Cooper’s popularity and Trump’s low approval ratings? Probably not.
Crime has been another winning issue for Republicans. Decarlos Brown, the man accused of murdering 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte’s Lynx Blue Line, was always going to be part of the campaign — especially considering the shocking crime was captured on security video from inside the train car.
But how?
On Thursday, Fox News published a story about Brown appearing on a list of 3,500 inmates who were part of a 2021 legal settlement with Cooper’s administration to be released early from prison. The ACLU and the NAACP had sued then-Gov. Cooper, demanding some inmates be released early because of the COVID-19 pandemic, putting inmates at risk.
Here is one page of the list of inmates who were part of the Feb. 25, 2021, settlement. They are listed as “early re-entries”:
In response to the Fox News story, the N.C. Department of Adult Correction issued a timeline of Brown’s incarceration. It denied Brown was released early due to the settlement.
On Sept. 20, 2020, Brown was released from custody on parole from Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution following the completion of his mandatory minimum sentence. He was sentenced to serve between six years and one month and eight years and four months.
The Department of Corrections said Brown’s “release and transition to post-release supervision was entirely unrelated to the COVID litigation.”
- On Feb. 6, 2021, while on post-release supervision, Brown was arrested again. (It wasn’t clear from court records what he was arrested for.) That arrest “subjected him to possible revocation of his post-release supervision,” the state said.
- A revocation hearing was held on Feb. 15, 2021. The hearing officer decided to reinstate Brown’s post-release supervision. In other words, Brown was not sent back to prison.
- Ten days later, on Feb. 25, the Cooper administration signed the legal settlement. The corrections department said Brown is on the list “because the settlement allowed the state to count offenders retroactively.”
The Cooper campaign said the claim that Brown was freed due to his inclusion on the list is a “lie.” It said the agreement allowed for people to be counted on the list if they were on parole.
(It seems a bit pointless to count people already out on parole as a way to decrease the prison population, but that’s another debate.)
“Decarlos Brown was not released from prison as a result of a court-ordered settlement but in fact served his full sentence and was not released early,” the campaign said.
So did the pending settlement influence the decision to not send Brown back to prison in February?
The Department of Adult Correction said the list of 3,500 names was created in monthly sections over the course of several months in 2021. The department said the list was started after Feb. 15. That would suggest that the settlement did not keep Brown free on parole and prevent him from being sent back to prison.
Even if Brown had been sent back to prison after his Feb. 6 arrest, his original sentence for armed robbery would have ended before the Lynx Blue Line killing in 2025.
Still, the names in the settlement had been secret until this week.
Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger claimed credit for getting the list of 3,500 names and releasing it.
Berger said in a statement that “Cooper let thousands of criminals out early and hid their identities from the public.”
A jolt for Whatley’s campaign?
Early polls in the race have shown Cooper with a stable lead of roughly five or six points.
Whatley has run a desultory campaign. He’s avoided commenting on issues that have consumed the nation, such as the immigration raids in Minneapolis. Instead, he has posted about Biscuitville.
Republicans now believe they have an opening.
A negative commercial (with ominous music) can cast aside the detailed timeline and focus on these points:
- Decarlos Brown’s name was on a Cooper-approved list of people to be released early.
- Cooper did not make the list public.
- Brown killed Zarutska on the light rail four years later.
This is all reminiscent of the 1988 Willie Horton ad that cripped Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. That case also illustrates the potential pitfalls of a complicated, nuanced defense of a policy for a political candidate.
At the time, it was noted that the furlough program that allowed Horton to leave prison was not started by Democratic Gov. Michael Dukakis — but by a Republican governor years earlier.
Didn’t matter in the end.
