Andrew Dunn on NC's US Senate race (07-29-2025--Hour1)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio and Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. And Tuesdays at noon is when we welcome Andrew Dunn to the program. He is the publisher of long Leaf Politics. That website is longleafpol dot com. He is also a contributing columnist to The Charlotte Observer. Andrew, how are you, sir? Oh, I'm great. It's good to be back on the show. Yes, sir, well, I'm glad you had some time off and safe travels and all of that. And look what you returned to a Senate race that has now quickly it seems, taken form. Roy Cooper announced it via a video message that he put out I played it yesterday. He also then had another message thanking people where he said, like the exact same stuff as his earlier video message, which I found kind of weird, and the attack ads have already started. You've got a piece at Long Leave Politics where you say that you try to see the best in people, but with Roy Cooper you just can't do it. So explain explain why that is. Yeah, Well, you know, folks who listen to me here on your show every week probably know that I'm generally a pretty reasonable guy. You know, try to give everybody the benefit of the dow and I can and I do that all the time with folks like Governor Josh Stein, Attorney General Jeff Jackson. You know, not that I don't criticize them, but you know I can at least appreciate that they're they're in the business for the right reasons. But with Governor Roy Cooper, former Governor Roy Cooper, I I have lost all ability to give him the benefit of the doubt. You know, I spent you know, two years essentially, you know, working against him when I was working for Lieutenant Governor Dan Forrest, and just the insight that that experience gave me, you know, kind of the peak behind the curtain, if you will, just led me to believe that, you know, Governor Cooper is one of is more manipulative, more calculating than just about anybody else I've met in the political world. Is that a sentiment that is shared by a lot of people up in Raleigh, a lot of the like the lawmakers and the politicos up there. Oh absolutely, I mean, and you'd be surprised at how many even Democrats will reach out to me and thank me for writing stuff like that. He's not always a pleasant guy to work with, even if you're on. His side, really, because, like I know, he does an email. I wonder if that'll come up. Remember when he was attorney general and they asked for somebody did a foyer request for all of his emails, and he had like twelve or something over a sixteen year career. I forgot all about that. Yeah, and they were like, oh, he just prefers to meet in person or talk on the phone. He never sends emails like m M yeah. Sure. He never said yeah. You called him the most politically calculating and accountability adverse leaders in North Carolina has had. He built a career on avoiding scrutiny and consolidating control, protecting himself, not the people he's supposed to serve. And then you go through several of the uh, several of these well I would like to call them scandals, but they didn't all kind of reach I think the scandal threshold, even though I thought they probably should have. Like the DOT, you know, blowing through its budget. The unemployment system, this was interesting. So during COVID, talk a little bit about what happened with the unemployment system. Yeah, so if you'll recall when Governor Cooper essentially shut the state down. You know, there was two weeks to stop or slow the spread or you know, was it ben the curb or something like that. Anyway, and they never went away. But when all that happened, you know, you had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people unemployed all at once, and so they were all trying to file for unemployment benefits and the system was just not set up for it. It could you know, Cooper's administration could not handle this flood of requests, and so people are calling and calling and can't get through to anybody, or if they do, they can't get anybody to actually help them. And so folks actually started, you know, just calling anybody in government that they could, and so they would call Lieutenant Governor Forrest's office, and you know, he never really you know, put this out there. He didn't want to get attention for it. But his office, his staff was kind of deputized to help people get the unemployment benefits that they needed. Yeah. I do remember hearing that from some people up in Raleigh that you guys were doing a lot of work to help people navigate this broken system that cooper like you. And look, I mean, I understand pandemic, everybody scared, made some bad decisions and all of that, but this would have been like a very likely prediction to have made, like, Hey, if we're going to close everybody's businesses down, they're not going to have work and so they're going to need unemployment and so maybe we need to be prepared for that, and they obviously were not. And this also kind of dovetails into the way he approached all of the pandemic management, which was to basically stiff arm all of the Council of State members, including Dan Forrest, right, because there was what six Republicans and four Democrats on that Council of State and so it seemed like at the time I was very critical of him for doing it this way. Which is that he didn't want any kind of pushback on anything he was doing via executive orders or executive directives or something yeh, the eds or something. Anyway, Yeah, he didn't want any he didn't want any resistance to that. He just wanted to rule, it seemed. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, our state constitution sets up, you know, a good number of checks and balances, especially you know, giving a lot of power to the General Assembly. But Governor Cooper does not read the state constitution that way. He reads it as you know, one man is in charge of everything, and he really governed that way. Yeah, you mentioned the DMV, the mess that that's become, and I think the big ones that are going to get a lot of attention also Hurricane Helene response or lack thereof, but also Hurricanes Matthew and Florence, where people I think even still to this day are not back in their homes. And that was from twenty sixteen. Hurricane Matthew was from twenty sixteen. You also had a note in here, and feel free to hit any of these that you want. I'm just throwing a bunch of these out, like I did not know he he directed the seating in the General Assembly for Democrats. Yeah, that was. Kind of a surprise to me. That came out when Representative Tricia Coffam ended up switching parties. My reporting kind of peel tech the curtain on that. I mean, he was definitely micromanaging all aspects of his caucus, you know, and he would pull whatever lever of power he had access to to make sure that Democrats were voting in line with what he wanted. And you know, you saw that with Senator Kirk Deviere, where you know, Governor Cooper funded a primary challenger for him for voting with Republicans on a few bills. But then he would also use, you know, some of those seating assignments and office assignments to keep people in line as well. If you didn't, if you weren't in the good races of the governor, you might might end up on the back row. That's unreal, all right. So let me shift gears over to what we pretty well assume is going to be an announcement from Michael Wattley, former North Carolina Republican Party chairman and now the RNC chair, although I don't know if he's actually stepped down off of that post yet, but he's going to run for this Senate seat as well. And there are some other candidates. Don Brown is in there. I think Nielsen is Andy Nilsen or Adam Nilson. I forget he's Andy, right, So there are a couple other Republicans in that field, but Wattley would obviously be the favorite, coming in with a Trump endorsement and a big fat Rolodex. And you had a piece that you say, Michael Wattley has earned his shot for the US Senate. And you looked at Wattley as a potential governor candidate last year, but now you or twenty twenty eight, I think you said, but you think the Senate race is a better it for him. So why is that? Yeah, So Michael Wattley, you know, he's been involved in North Carolina politics for a long time now, and he was, you know, dating back to twenty sixteen. He's been closely tied in with the Trump administration and the Trump campaign. And you know that's a feather in Wattley's cap is he delivered North Carolina to Trump in three elections in a row. And you know, in all three cases, North Carolina was viewed as a potential swing state, and you know, you look at twenty twenty, I mean even Georgia went blue and North Carolina did not. And a lot of that has to do with with Michael Wattley. He really oriented the party at the state level, for better or for worse, around you know, supporting the president. So you know, he's clearly been a loyal foot soldier for Trump, and so I argue that Trump kind of owed him he was due of this endorsement. And I think, you know, you're right that this is definitely going to clear the field. Essentially, You're not gonna see any sitting members of Congress who are gonna throw their hat in the ring, you know, against a Trump endorsement. So that I would say it's safe to say that this the primary season is already over. Yeah, I would tend to agree with that. And you know, and I'm not saying that don shouldn't run or Andy shouldn't run. There free to run, obviously, but I think that you know, when you got a guy of Wattley's connections, uh, and he's been around you know, politics for decades and he knows a lot of people, there's gonna be a lot of money that has to get raised from out of state, and he is probably the best one suited to do that because he's been doing it as part of the RNC for years now. So it just seems like he comes in as the UH, as the proverbial favorite. You also said he is aligned with the current moment and that gives him a real shot. What do you mean by that? I mean, I just mean that he is on Team Trump. You know, that hasn't always worked to the benefit of candidates, you know, in North Carolina or around the country. It seems like Donald Trump can get away with things that even Trump aliine candidates can't. But on the other hands, I mean, North Carolina did vote for Trump in three straight elections, you know, having that Trump endorsement, especially if if President Trump comes to North Carolina next year for rallies to support Wattley, that could certainly help juice turn out and help get him over the line. Yeah, However, you know he's got some significant disadvantages. I mean, his name I D is relatively low in North Carolina. I mean Roy Cooper comes in with virtually one hundred percent name I D. Michael Wattley. You know, you and I know who he is, and people in the know know who he is. But if you're not really involved in party politics, you're you're probably not going to know who Michael Wattley is at this point. Yeah, it's good stuff. You could read more of Andrews's work at long leavepol dot com Longleaf Politics. Andrew Dunn, thanks so much for your time, buddy. Good to hear from you again. Yeah, thank you, all right, take care. You know. Stories are powerful. 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They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot Com. From the text line, Dana says Cooper sounds like Trump. If you don't do what he wants, there's retribution, And Craig says, Pete, there is a certain female radio personality on your sister station who says there's no way Watley can beat Cooper. She said the only person who could possibly beat him was Laura Trump. I would love to hear your opinion on that subject. That's Craig in Belmont. I don't know, Yeah, I don't know. The US Senate races in North Carolina are always very very close, like one to two points. So look, you know, some people are very confident in making predictions. Absolutely, we are, what a year and a half out. Most people are not even paying attention yet, So yeah, I think it's going to be a very competitive race. Roy Cooper could very well win that seat. Absolutely, He's in a better position than Cherry Beasley was. So he's got a lot of name id. Now the question is how does he survive the kinds of negative attacks that are going to be directed at him that he has not in his career ever really suffered. He has not been the target of the kinds of attacks that we are going to start seeing. In fact, we already have two the was it the Senate Leadership Fund and the National Republican Senatorial Fund. They both have launched ads against him, like immediately when he made his announcement, they dropped their ads. So this is the this is the Senate Leadership Fund spot. He says he's a moderate, but Roy Cooper's record tells a radically different story. Higher taxes, sanctuary cities, and a radical gender ideology. Cooper veto to bill to protect girls' sports, veto to bill to ban gender transition surgeries for miners, puberty blockers, double masectomies, mutilating children. Cooper stood with the woke left endangering our kids. And when it came to keeping violent criminals off our streets, Cooper said no to Ice, not once, not twice, but three times. Illegal immigrants, sex offenders, kidnappers, violent predators, let go because of Roy Cooper's veto Cooper veto tax relief for middle class families and small businesses, higher taxes, more illegals, a woke agenda. Roy Cooper masquerades as a moderate, but he's just another radical DC liberal in disguise, and. It's got Ai generated Cooper with the with a mask of himself. So he's taken like the mask off and it's still him underneath. Okay, So that was the Senate Leadership Fund. This one is from the National the NRS, the National Republican Senatorial Fund. Here is theirs. Like the search is over for someone Democrats can dare to count on. Hello America, I'm Roy Cooper. For nearly forty years, Roy Cooper has delivered a reliable yes for the Democrat Party, like his wallet draining. Yes to hire taxes or a lock the doors, Yes to closing schools of fearless yess to pro hamas radicals and no consequences, Yes to releasing criminal illegal aliens, a green light, yes to men in women's sports, and a bold yes for Biden. Joe Biden saved this nation. Followed by a never mind, it's Kamala, my friend, comrade, No matter the issue, but you already know the answer, Roy Cooper, always a yes to the. Last scary all right, so you know the contours of the attack heads. Like I said, they've already started. They were already on the digital platforms. The tying of Cooper to Biden, I think is going to be interesting to watch because back on July third, twenty twenty four, this was right after Joe Biden's terrible debate performance, Democrat governors from across the country discussed their concerns with Biden during a hastily arranged meeting. Roy Cooper took part. He said, quote, we had a good meeting with the President talking about what's needed to win. Donald Trump is an existential threat to our democracy, and everyone in the room agreed that defeating him is imperative. President Biden told us he is definitely running for reelection. He is our nominee, and we'll continue doing everything we can to deliver North Carolina for him. Cooper indicated that remember, Biden then came to North Carolina for rally for a stop and suggested that Cooper might be appointed to a high ranking post in Washington if Biden were to win reelection. So Roy Cooper part of the cover up of Joe Biden's declining mental acuity right and lied to everybody about it. And then as soon as the party poo b Oz did their coup and kicked Joe out and Kamala got in. Then he was like, now it's Kamala. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. 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Call or text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at cabins Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. This is why I call him my good friend, Ray. Are you ready to elect Ray Cooper your governor? Yeah? That was Hillary Clinton twenty sixteen, stumping with her good friend, as she called him earlier in the rally, her good friend, Ray Cooper. And then I believe, if memory serves correctly, I think Kamala Harris called him Ray also. So they're very tight. They're all very very tight. Roy Cooper also put out a video message yesterday. So first there was the announcement video. I played that, and then I saw a different video of him, and I knew it was different because in this one he's standing, not sitting, and he's wearing a white button down shirt, no tie of course, because we're all too cool for ties, and a blazer. But he said basically the same thing, and the smarm school marm sounding tone is back, the affected whispering to try to like Obama eyes the speech, you know, when Obama would get old whispery on things like do that kind of effect. And Roy does this. He did it during COVID and it's like he's trying to like do these things. He's almost like an AI bot that has been given instructions on what to do, and he's following the instructions. But there's just something missing there. Sincerity, that's it. Yes, sincerity is what's missing. It doesn't come across as real, not to me, and he talks to me like I'm a kindergartener, which I don't appreciate. So here was Roy's Day one message. Hi guys, I'm Roy Cooper, and today I officially announced my campaign for the United States Senate. You know, I never really did want to go to Washington. I wanted to serve the people of North Carolina. He said the exact same line. So this is obviously now going to be a slogan that he is going to utilize. I didn't want to go to Washington. I just want to serve North Carolina in Washington. They made me do it. They made me go to Washington. They're making me run for this US Senate seat. I didn't want to do this, but those dastardly Republicans have made me do this. It's not that he's been a politician his entire adult life. No, it's not really the only thing he knows how to do is run for office. No, it's that he needs to serve us. It's like, you've done enough, please, Ray, just go retire here. And that's what I did. But we are living in an extraordinary moment and it's time for everybody have to step up. And that's what I'm doing by running for the Senate. Let me tell you, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate all of the help that you've given to me. All Right, did you hear what he just did there too? Let me tell you I cannot tell you how much. So again, it's these attempts at being something that he does not appear to be, which is this moderate Yes, but this like folksy, lovable uncle type of figure, and people as you heard from Andrew Dunn earlier in the hour. People have been Raleigh. They know the real Roy Cooper. I've talked about it. I wrote an op ed about the guy like three years ago. I want to say Andrew called him politically calculating and accountability a verse, and for the first time in his political life, Andrew said, I'm optimistic that he won't be able to duck, deflect and outspend his way past his record. I got to tell you also the issue that he rode into the governor's mansion on the HB two issue, which was bathroom access for transgenders, right, got into the state legislative fight with the HB two passage, and then he whipped up a boycott against his own state as attorney general, went out and solicited business leaders on the left to boycott our state to exact punishment on North Carolinians because of a fight he was having with Republicans over the trans issue. But it would benefit him politically personally. And so yeah, when they canceled the NBA All Star Game and all those you know, service jobs that rely on that influx of tourists, Sorry workers, sorry small businesses, you have to suffer because Roy needs to win, you know. And maybe maybe I'm a little optimistic here, but I do sense that there has been a shift in this issue since twenty sixteen, twenty fifteen, right when he was able to use it to be Pat McCrory. A lot has happened in a decade on the trans issues, and I'm not so sure that this is a winner for him anymore. Let me get back to the audio. There's only like twenty seconds left today. For those of you who have contributed, who have forwarded our announcement video to your family, your friends, your co workers, I deeply appreciate it. This is going to be a long, difficult campaign and I'm gonna need you guys every step of the way. So let's get together and let's go win this thing. Thanks a lot, Yeah, eh, get hyped? Yeah, Ugh, gosh, it's all it's like I'm I'm suffering trauma my PTSD from watching his COVID briefings every day five years ago. It's all coming back to me now, and not in a good way. All right, if you're listening to this show, so you know, I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Steve texts in that Roy Cooper is as exciting as a colonoscopy yiks, yikes. By the way, actually historic day up in Raleigh today. I think the Senate overrode a dozen vetos in a single day. The House overrode a bunch of vetos. We're going to go into it. I spent about an hour and a half this morning watching the House floor debate on some of these bills that got overridden, and I've pulled only the best, the highest quality audio for you from the floor debate. So yeah, and we'll cover the vetos that were overridden today, some of which cleared both chambers so now are in effect law. Rich says I knew Ray at UNC. He dated my cousin. They were serious for some time. At that time, he was controlled by his father and uncle, both big Democrats in Nash County and eastern North Carolina. They said he would be governor someday and laid out his path, paved the way early on. He's a politician to the core. He was raised to be one. My cousin was heartbroken when he dumped her for a ready made family, a woman with two children, a family that he quote started in Nash County. She thought she was going to be the first lady. My cousin is a hardcore Democrat, loves campaigning, has more personality than Ray but did not want children. I suspect the latter two were factors in his dumping her. That said, dumping my cousin was probably the smartest thing he has done. That's wow. Okay, well, Hugh, that story took a turn. Rick says, I like the way Ray in his announcement to run states that the super rich have become so at your expense. He obviously doesn't understand that wealth is created, not stolen. Yeah, he's he's. I saw somebody describe him. A national pundit described him after watching that video and said, these are all the same lines that Bernie Sanders says. He's just Bernie Sanders with a smile. Yeah. And that's the thing about Roy Cooper. He pretends to be some sort of blue dog Democrat, moderate kind of guy, and he never has been, never has been. Back to the Andrew dunpiece at long Leaf Politics, he says, national money is finally coming in to tell the full story. The National Republican Senatorial Committee's already out with an ad tying Cooper to National Democrats, and that's a good start. Republicans have tried before to make this connection stick and it has not worked. But those were state level races where Cooper could blur the lines and make every issue about But a US Senate campaign is different, and he's exactly right. He says, it's it's about direction of the country. It's about control of the Senate. It's about Supreme Court uh and judgement approvals, you know, nominations and such like. That's the that's the focus. And this is going to be a far more nationalized race than anything Cooper has ever been in and in the past, because as I've gone over this for years, he developed a donor network out of state based on the HB two fight, and he got all of these you know democrats and progressives and leftists and business leaders and you know deep pocket Trustafarians and stuff, and they they funded his campaigns well in excess of anything that the Republicans could or had built. And he was able to, you know, buy a lot of ad time, do a lot of campaign stops and all of that. But now you've got money that's coming in for the Republican whoever it is probably gonna be Michael Wattley. And Wattley has a very thick Rollodex as well. He knows a lot of deep pockets nationally too, and he's got a lot of people that are in office that are there because of his efforts, his help as the RNC chair. And that means you can bring a lot of people to come to town to draw a crowd and hit him up for money, right, do a lot of fundraisers with some big name draws. I mentioned before I left Asheville, he brought Ted Cruz to town to stump for I forget who I think it may have been. Hmmm, it may have been Ted Budd, Ted Bud No, I don't remember. Madison Cawthorne was there, but it wasn't an event for him. But like that was a that was a huge get for the area to get Ted Cruz to come into town for this appearance, and Ted did. At one point he called it South Carolina and everybody kind of likes he oh, and he saw the reaction and then he immediately re racks the sentence and corrects himself and says, North Carolina. It's kind of kind of cringey, but it was a good speech. Chip says, if Roy starts growing a beard and takes to Cussen, we will know the gloves are off. That's right. Well, and also Pump and iron. Have you seen this, this trend the Democrats are doing now, They're they're posting videos of themselves working out in the gym. I'm not kidding, Like, there's too many videos of them pumping iron for it to not be some sort of guidance that they have been given. It shows that we fight, we're strong, we're tough. I'm in a gym. Look at me, I'm Eric Swallwell, I'm lifting one hundred and thirty pounds. I hate Trump like that's the that's the message. I'm gonna fight everybody for you. Look at me. I'm working out so I can fight people. And a cuss too, And I say, y'all, and I got a beard. Phillip says, a point of clarification, my good friend Ray is a candidate for US Senate, but he is not running. Ray will hunker down in his basement Biden's style, and let the legacy media run interference for him. He might do sequestered appearances with a select group of Marxists, with the keynote people such as Tim Balls okay, you say he's just all right, large mouth bass, Gavin k Newsome, Jeff Bosa okay, and perhaps Adam shift for brains. In summary, Ray will be harder to find than an orthodontist in the UK. That okay, that's just a cheap shot, but sometimes we take. Them all right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.