Democrat Roy Cooper has won North Carolina's open U.S. Senate seat, defeating President Donald Trump's handpicked Republican candidate, Michael Whatley, and flipping a Republican-held seat in the fight for control of the Senate. The Associated Press called the race for Cooper at 8:23 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, minutes after the state's first results were released.
Cooper, 69, led from the first returns and never gave the lead back. The AP called the race with Cooper ahead 66.8 percent to 31.6 percent in the early count, and his margin held as the count widened, with about 85 percent of the expected vote in. Whatley conceded the race, calling Cooper and addressing his own supporters.
The victory is Cooper's seventh statewide win in North Carolina. The former two-term governor, who also served as the state's attorney general, becomes the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from North Carolina since 2008, and only the fourth in the last 50 years.
Cooper campaigned on the high cost of food and energy, telling voters in the closing stretch of the campaign that Washington needed to bring everyday prices down. Accepting the result at his election-night event in Raleigh, he told supporters: "North Carolinians, I accept your job offer."
The seat opened when Republican Senator Thom Tillis chose not to seek another term after clashing with Trump over Medicaid cuts in the President's signature tax and spending law. Whatley, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee who had never held elected office, ran as Trump's chosen replacement and campaigned alongside the President in North Carolina, but he never caught the former governor.
Republicans went into Election Day holding the Senate 53 to 47, and Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control of the chamber for the final two years of Trump's term. North Carolina is the first Republican-held seat to fall, and it matters far beyond one state: whoever controls the Senate decides whether the President's judges, cabinet officers and spending plans move quickly or stall, and Cooper's win on a cost-of-living message shows the pressure voters are putting on Washington over food and energy prices.
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