For weeks, the North Carolina Senate race looked predictable — competitive, yes, but stable. With Sen. Thom Tillis retiring, Democrats fielded their strongest possible candidate in former Gov. Roy Cooper, while Republicans tapped RNC Chair Michael Whatley, backed by President Trump. The RealClearPolitics average gave Cooper a slim edge: 46% to Whatley’s 41.3%.
But the brutal stabbing death of Iryna Zarutska has changed everything.
Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant who fled Putin’s war only to be murdered in Charlotte, was not just a victim of random violence. She was the victim of a system — a justice system shaped by progressive policies that prioritize leniency over safety, excuses over accountability. Her killer, Decarlos Brown Jr., was a schizophrenic career criminal with 14 prior arrests. He had convictions for felony larceny, armed robbery, and making threats. He had attacked family members. His own mother warned that he was dangerous. Yet he walked free.
Why? Because during Cooper’s governorship, North Carolina embraced the recommendations of a leftist criminal justice task force — “reforms” on pretrial release, fees, and fines that weakened the state’s ability to keep violent offenders behind bars. In practice, this meant that men like Brown roamed the streets until, inevitably, they struck again.
This is not a policy debate anymore. It’s a wedge issue.
We’ve seen this before. In 1988, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis watched his presidential campaign collapse under the weight of Willie Horton — a convicted murderer freed on weekend furlough who committed armed robbery and rape while out. The Bush campaign’s ads were devastating, not because they were unfair, but because they were true: soft-on-crime policies put innocent Americans at risk.
North Carolina now has its own Willie Horton. And Roy Cooper is the governor who presided over the system that let Decarlos Brown roam free.
Michael Whatley will hammer this point relentlessly. President Trump already is. And in a state where suburban moms and working-class voters alike worry about safety, the Democrats’ soft-on-crime dogma will not play well.
The irony is that Democrats never seem to learn. Since the 1960s, they’ve embraced leniency as a moral virtue, even as crime spikes and victims pile up. They tell voters that criminals are “misunderstood” or “systemically disadvantaged.” They insist the answer is more programs, more freedom, more second chances. What they never do is accept responsibility for the blood that follows.
This time, though, the blood belongs to a young woman who fled a war zone only to die at the hands of a repeat criminal in a supposedly safe American city. And unlike their allies in the media, Democrats won’t be able to bury the story.
