Democrats are confident that Cooper will be a formidable candidate after he won races for governor in 2016 and 2020 even as President Donald Trump carried the state. Trump also won the state in 2024, by 3 percentage points.

Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, a North Carolina native, passed on running to replace retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis. So Republicans turned to Whatley, who was chairman of the Republican National Committee at the time and had previously led the North Carolina GOP.

Trump encouraged Whatley to run and endorsed his campaign when he launched in late July. And the RNC gave Whatley an early boost by approving the national party to spend resources helping his campaign, even though he had not yet won the primary.

Whatley, who tied himself to Trump in the early stages of the race, touted that endorsement in the run-up to Tuesday’s primary, launching a TV ad featuring Trump saying of Whatley that it is “so important that he wins” and that he “represents your values.”

Whatley also launched an ad on streaming services ahead of Tuesday’s primary, offering a preview of his case against Cooper in the coming months.

The spot ties Cooper to a fatal stabbing last year on a train, where Iryna Zarutska, 23, a Ukrainian refugee, was killed. The suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., had served time in prison for robbery with a dangerous weapon. A federal grand jury indicted him in October.

Whatley’s ad, which features video of the stabbing, also features a narrator knocking Cooper’s support for a “woke agenda of cashless bail,” without a source for that claim, and saying Cooper “has her blood on his hands.”

“The murder of Iryna Zarutska was a despicable act of evil and it’s disturbing that Michael Whatley continues using the footage of her death in his ads against her family’s explicit wishes,” Cooper campaign spokesperson Jordan Monaghan told NBC News in a statement, referring to a report that Zarutska’s family had asked the public in September to stop sharing the video. “Political candidates should stop lying about this tragedy for political gain and actually work to keep our communities safe.”

“Roy Cooper is the only candidate who spent his career prosecuting violent criminals and keeping thousands of them behind bars as attorney general, and signing tough on crime laws and stricter bail and pretrial release rules as governor,” Monaghan said.

Cooper, who had been state attorney general before he became governor, signed a bill into law in 2023 changing bail procedures for violent offenses.

Cooper, meanwhile, has been stressing affordability on the campaign trail, and he is launching a “Make Stuff Cost Less” tour after the primary.

Cooper has also been building up his campaign coffers. He had raised $21.1 million and had $14.2 million in his bank account as of Feb. 11, while Whatley had raised $6.3 million and had $2.5 million on hand.