(The Center Square) – Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley, trailing fiscally throughout his campaign against Democrat Roy Cooper, is getting a portion of the gap filled in by the Senate Leadership Fund led by his party’s campaign group and others aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota.

The Senate Leadership Fund on Monday said it and other alliances have raised $500 million for the 2026 midterms. Campaign advertising from Murphy to Manteo already highlights the narrative of Democrats’ “soft on crime” policies as it relates to the death of 22-year-old Logan Federico.

Other spots are already airing in Alaska, Iowa, Maine and Michigan. Alex Latchman, executive director of the fund, said more resources have been raised for this election cycle than any other Senate effort in history.

In campaign finance reports through the second quarter at the Federal Elections Commission, total raised is $34.9 million by Cooper and $11.2 million by Whatley. Cash on hand at the June 30 date was $20.7 million for Cooper and $3.4 million for Whatley. Senate Leadership Fund totals are not counted in these numbers.

Alexander Dickey is accused of breaking into a home where Federico, 22, was visiting May 3, 2025, in Columbia, S.C., while visiting friends at the University of South Carolina. She was shot and killed. Federico is from Waxhaw, just outside of Charlotte, and was planning to be a teacher.

Dickey’s criminal history includes 25 felonies among 39 arrests.

Eleven times between 2013 and 2025, Dickey was taken in by the Lexington County Sheriff’s Office in South Carolina. Charges in the Columbia case include murder, two counts of first-degree burglary, two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, two counts of grand larceny, grand larceny of a motor vehicle, and three counts of financial transaction card theft.

He could be sentenced to life in prison. The case is pending trial in Columbia; he's being held in a South Carolina prison without bail.

This is the case for which U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., gained unwanted national attention for misidentifying Federico's image during a task force hearing in Charlotte in September.

Whatley and Cooper, the former four-term attorney general and two-term governor in the years 2000 to 2024, are locked in a pivotal duel being watched by many across the nation. This U.S. Senate seat is viewed as a major player nationally in the quest for a majority in the chamber. Republicans have 53 seats today. In no particular order, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, Maine, Iowa, New Hampshire, Alaska, Texas and Montana are the other top battlegrounds among 35 races.

Republicans are 5-for-5 in North Carolina's U.S. Senate races since losing to the late Kay Hagan in 2008. Democrats chase back to 1998 for the last time winning a Senate seat at the midterms.

Republicans in statewide races for this decade – 2020, 2022 and 2024 – are 32-10 against Democrats, a party with significantly declining voter registrations for more than 20 consecutive years.

Elections boards across the state one week from Friday begin sending requested absentee ballots to any voter, opening the 60-day window – no state has one longer – to Election Day on Nov. 3. Early in-person voting is Oct. 15-31.

North Carolinians will choose a U.S. senator, all 14 members of the U.S. House, and all 170 members of the General Assembly. There also elections for judges, district attorneys and various county and local level leadership positions.