Cooper, Whatley makes dueling visits in Gaston County as Senate race heats up

GASTON COUNTY, N.C. — Affordability was the focus of both Michael Whatley and Roy Cooper during their dueling visits to Gaston County on Thursday as the race for North Carolina’s Senate seat heats up.

Both recognized costs are too high but disagree on how we got here.

“Look at what President Trump has done to open up federal lands and make sure that we have effective production here in the United States,” Whatley said. “Turning on the spigot, unleashing, you know, American energy, as he calls it, I think is tremendously important.”

“He was a lobbyist for big oil and utility companies and he worked to make sure they could get higher rates and higher profits,” Cooper said of Whatley.

Cooper criticized Whatley for being a shareholder and for serving as a lobbyist for Duke Energy. Cooper’s newest TV ad is focused on health care costs.

Whatley went after him for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from health care execs despite claiming he wants to take on insurance companies

“Now he’s rolling out a campaign saying, “I’m going to get tough on these guys. Give me a break. This guy is going to get right back in bed with them and figure out how they can make more money while you’re paying more for your health care here in North Carolina,” Whatley said.

“He says he wants market forces to take care of things, and that’s his excuse for wanting to cut Medicaid and wanting to cut the Affordable Care Act, where so many people have lost their insurance, I’m out there standing up to the insurance companies,” Cooper said.

As the price of gas rises because of the ongoing war in Iran, Cooper says it is aimless and causing more problems. Whatley says he supports President Trump’s mission.

“I don’t think we’re any safer, and I don’t think we’re any more economically secure. And in fact, I think we are less economically secure than we were before this war,” Cooper said.

“I absolutely support the president’s decision to ensure that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. That is absolutely the highest threat that we have anywhere in the world right now, and he took decisive action to prevent that,” Whatley added.

One of the ongoing issues in this race has been the COVID-19 era settlement that resulted in prisoners being released. Whatley said Cooper should have fought it harder, and Cooper said, unlike Whatley, he’s actually prosecuted violent crime.

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