The National Republican Senatorial Committee opened a fresh attack on Roy Cooper on Wednesday, tying the former North Carolina governor to a case involving a man it says was convicted of sexually battering a 13-year-old child. In a post titled “Roy Cooper’s Worst of the Worst Wednesday” on NRSC.org, the committee said Furmencio Miranda-Cortazar was initially arrested in 2018 on the sexual battery charge and later became the subject of an ICE detainer.
The committee said Miranda-Cortazar was then released from jail by Sheriff Gerald Baker before ICE later arrested him to await his deportation hearing. It also said he had prior convictions or charges involving DWI, driving while his license was revoked and a hit-and-run tied to property damage. The message was aimed squarely at Cooper, who the committee framed as responsible because of his years as North Carolina attorney general and governor.
The NRSC did not stop at the criminal case. It used the post to argue that Cooper’s political record shows weakness on public safety, with committee spokesman Nick Puglia saying Cooper failed to keep North Carolinians safe from illegal alien sexual predators like Miranda-Cortazar throughout his nearly 40-year career because he is too weak to stand up to the radical left. That line was designed less as a policy claim than as a campaign frame, pairing a lurid case with a broader argument about leadership and immigration enforcement.
The timing matters because Cooper is not campaigning from behind. Newsweek reported this week that a Harper Polling/Carolina Journal survey of 600 likely voters taken May 10-11, 2026 showed Cooper leading Michael Whatley by more than 11 points, with 49.8 percent support for Cooper and 38.7 percent for Whatley. The poll carried a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Carolina Forward also reported a separate May 2026 survey that put Cooper ahead of Whatley by 7 points.
Those polls suggest the Senate race is still being shaped by name recognition and partisan mood rather than by Republican attacks alone. DJ Griffin of Carolina Forward said it was striking that a career politician with universal name ID was leading in polls six months out from an election in which no money had yet been spent on ads, and he said Cooper has underperformed polls in each of his past elections. Griffin added that Whatley would continue to close the name ID gap and emerge victorious in November.
Carolina Forward’s numbers point to the broader landscape Republicans are trying to fight through. The group said Donald Trump’s net job approval in North Carolina was minus 12 points, with 43 percent approving and 55 percent disapproving. It also said Governor Josh Stein’s net approval stood at plus 16 points. Together, those findings suggest that the Republican ticket enters the race with a president who is unpopular in the state and a Democratic brand that remains competitive.
The NRSC’s new post shows where the party intends to press: not on Cooper’s biography alone, but on a public-safety argument that reaches back to his time in statewide office. The polls show why it is doing so now. Cooper remains ahead, but the race is still early enough that Republican strategists believe a sustained attack on his record and his handling of law-and-order issues could narrow the gap before voters focus fully on November.
