Senate Republicans move cash from purple North Carolina to red Kansas as battle for majority shifts
Oct 2, 2026, 9:18 AM
FILE - North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley listens as President Donald Trump speaks, Sept. 16, 2026, in Gastonia, N.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans’ top campaign spending organization is pulling back in North Carolina and pouring money into Kansas, a striking shift that shows how the party’s plan to keep its majority has turned into an increasingly defensive fight ahead of November’s midterms.
The decision by the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with top Senate Republicans, was disclosed Friday by four people with direct knowledge of the situation who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal strategy.
The Senate Leadership Fund will make a seven-figure advertising buy in Kansas, a state that Republican Donald Trump won by nearly 16 percentage points in the last presidential election, according to the four people. Sen. Roger Marshall, a Republican seeking a second term, is facing a challenge from Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton, the leader of the nation’s largest United Methodist Church.
The shifting resources signal a lack of confidence that Michael Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chairman who was Trump’s choice to run for Senate in North Carolina, can beat Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper.
The moves offer a stark sign of how dramatically the Senate map has shifted just a month before midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. Republicans entered the cycle believing they had more opportunities to flip Democratic-held seats than they had incumbents at serious risk. Now they are dumping money into states where Trump won comfortably in 2024.
Senate Republican campaign leaders have pointed to spiking fuel prices, driven in part by the war with Iran, as one of the issues weighing on their candidates.
In Kansas, Marshall won his first Senate race by more than 11 percentage points in 2020, the year Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump for president. However, diesel costs and other economic concerns have made the state more competitive than Republicans had expected.
The Senate Leadership Fund had planned to spend $18 million in North Carolina over the next month, according to reservations tracked by AdImpact. The group has already spent about $32 million there.
Trump campaigned with Whatley last month, saying higher fuel prices were “a very inexpensive price to pay” for preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Though gas prices are near historic highs, they remain below the nationwide record set in 2022.
Trump won North Carolina by just over 3 percentage points in 2024. Republicans have held both of the state’s Senate seats since 2015, even as Cooper won two terms as governor and served from 2017 to 2025.
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
