Whatley's Attack Machine Just Got Caught: A Grieving Dad Says He Was 'Swindled'

There is a special contempt reserved for the political operative who mines a father's grief for a thirty-second spot. Meet Michael Whatley's allies.

Ronald Hayes lost his son. Shemar Hayes, a college football player, was 23 when he was murdered in Charlotte in March 2024. His father agreed to sit for a camera crew because he thought he was making an ad about gun violence and keeping his boy's name alive. Instead he was drafted into one of the ugliest smears of the 2026 cycle. (cite index="1">"I have already been swindled into an ad that was about politics, which I don't want to be about," Hayes told NC Newsline on Monday, in a story dated August 31.

Here is the rot at the center of it. (cite index="1">The ad falsely implies that Cooper released Shemar's killer from prison early during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Tyzavian Smith, the man convicted of the murder, was 18 at the time, was not in prison, and had no prior adult record. The spot has been (cite index="1">viewed more than 25 million times on YouTube and is part of a $17 million campaign targeting Cooper. Twenty-five million views built on a lie about a dead young man. Hayes, for the record, (cite index="2">is a Democrat and says he will keep voting for Cooper.

The outfit that did this has a name and a pattern. (cite index="2">The ad is the work of the Senate Leadership Fund, the PAC backing Whatley, which was earlier called out for blaming Cooper for the murder of Logan Federico, whose killer was a South Carolina man with a South Carolina record who was released from a South Carolina jail. Different grieving family, same con. When you cannot win on the merits, you rent other people's worst days.

And the merits are not there. Cooper has led wire to wire. (cite index="3">An Elon University poll released August 12 put Cooper up 53 to 42 among likely voters, and (cite index="4">a High Point University poll released later in August had Cooper ahead 50 to 45. The money tells the same story: (cite index="5">Cooper raised $14.8 million in the second quarter to Whatley's $5 million, roughly triple, leaving Whatley with about $3.4 million on hand against Cooper's $20.7 million.

Who is the man behind the mud? A DC operator with a resume that reads like an opposition researcher's dream. (cite index="6">Lobbying disclosures show Whatley lobbied for Exxon Mobil and General Electric, and his support for drilling in North Carolina's coastal waters could hurt him with moderate voters. Closer to home, (cite index="7">since entering the race Whatley has accepted $10,000 from Duke Energy's political action committee, after spending more than a decade at a lobbying firm that counted Duke as a client, while holding as much as $410,000 in Duke stock as the utility seeks to raise rates. A Big Oil and utility lobbyist running as the friend of the working family. Sure.

Whatley wants to campaign as the tough-on-crime candidate. He might start by explaining the tragedies his own side keeps exploiting, and the dad who says he got played. MUCK YOU is not a slogan you get to earn by lying to a father about his murdered son.