We’re about a week and a half out from North Carolina’s March 3 primary elections. The biggest race on the ballot is for the U.S. Senate seat that will be vacated by Republican Thom Tillis. Several Republicans are vying to be the nominee who will likely face former Gov. Roy Cooper. One of them is Michele Morrow, who attracted national attention in 2024 when she ran for state superintendent of public instruction. She’s hoping the recognition she received in that race will help her bid this year, but she's got challenges. Carli Brosseau wrote about those challenges for The Assembly. She joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry.
Marshall Terry: Morrow won the GOP nomination for state superintendent in 2024, but lost the election to Democrat Mo Green. Remind us why she drew national attention in that race?
Carli Brosseau: CNN went through her past tweets and other social media posts and found that she had used the word ‘traitors’ quite a lot, referring to former Governor Roy Cooper and President Joe Biden and a variety of other Democratic politicians or donors, and in some cases, was advocating for their death. Morrow has said that some of that was sarcasm, or it was taken out of context. But there were an awful lot of tweets to that effect.
Terry: And you found that Morrow doesn't think she lost in 2024, kind of an echo of Trump's election denialism, right?
Brosseau: That's what she was telling me. She described watching the election results come in and seeming to be ahead, and then election results from Mecklenburg County came in around 11:15 on election night and the results flipped. She thought that none of the results coming in from Mecklenburg County went to her. They all went to Mo Green, according to her account.
Terry: And to be clear, she’s provided no evidence, right?
Brosseau: She's provided no evidence, that’s right. And it's disputed as well.
Terry: Why has she now turned her attention to the U.S. Senate seat?
Brosseau: She said that she has been looking at this for quite a long time. She was going up to Washington, D.C. and explaining to the people she spoke with up there — various folks connected with President Trump — that Thom Tillis could not win, that he was very disliked within the Republican Party in North Carolina, and pushing for alternatives and nominating herself as one of those alternatives.
Terry: And Tillis is not seeking election to the seat this year. Michael Whatley, who chaired the Republican National Committee and state Republican Party, is the frontrunner in the GOP race for the Senate seat. He’s received the endorsement of President Trump. Why does Morrow think she can beat Whatley? Is it just because of the name recognition she got in that last election?
Brosseau: That is one of her main arguments. She also points out that Whatley isn't well-liked among some of the grassroots activists within the party in North Carolina for a whole variety of reasons. She says she's been the strongest fighter, that she's been doing it all along, and that it should be obvious that she is the one who can rally folks to the polls. She says she's the more exciting candidate.
Whatley has substantially more resources. He's gotten an unusual level of help from the national party and has received more than $5 million. That figure is from the end of December. Morrow, in comparison, has received only about $3,700 as of the end of December.
Terry: You report not all Republicans think the attention Morrow received is a good thing for the GOP race this time around. How so?
Brosseau: The publicity connected with that CNN piece and all of the follow-up reporting was definitely not positive. Morrow had a hard time talking about those past tweets. She sort of shifted her explanation, and she ended up deleting a lot of them. I think that a lot of Republicans think, do we really need to go through this again?
