Trump's handpicked Senate candidate has stopped buying television airtime in North Carolina — and the country's biggest Republican super PAC has stopped paying for it, too. Michael Whatley's campaign hasn't run a new broadcast ad since October 7, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, and the Senate Leadership Fund has pulled its remaining money out of the race entirely after sinking more than $30 million into it.

The retreat comes less than three weeks before Election Day, in what Politico called "a highly unusual move" for a race Republicans once treated as a top national priority. Democrat Roy Cooper's campaign, by contrast, already has $7.4 million in future TV reservations locked in — and Republican-aligned outside groups currently have nothing booked for Whatley at all.

A 14-point gap and a "trash poll" fight

The money pullback lines up with the numbers. A WSOC-TV/WRAL-TV poll conducted by SurveyUSA October 7-11 found Cooper, the former two-term governor, leading Whatley 54% to 40% among likely voters — a 14-point advantage that one Western Carolina University political scientist called "an awful big number," adding he'd be surprised if the final margin holds that wide. It's not an outlier: half a dozen polls since mid-September, from AARP to High Point University, have all shown Cooper ahead by anywhere from 7 to 16 points.

Whatley has pushed back hard on the surveys, branding one unfavorable Carolina Journal poll a "trash poll" and insisting the race is actually "right at margin of error." His campaign spokesman, DJ Griffin, said the ad pause is temporary. "It's a temporary pause and we'll be back on the air shortly with our closing message," Griffin said, adding the campaign is confident it has "the resources to highlight career politician Roy Cooper's 40 years of failures and win in November."

"IN THIS INCREASINGLY COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT, THIS JUST MAKES SENSE." — ROY COOPER, ON REPUBLICAN GROUPS PULLING THEIR AD MONEY FROM HIS OPPONENT'S RACE

Cooper didn't hide his read on the GOP retreat, suggesting the super PAC's own internal numbers told the same story the public polls were telling. His campaign has also brushed off Whatley's attacks on his health as "desperate lies," pointing to a schedule that has included more than 350 campaign stops.

Whatley, the sitting chairman of the Republican National Committee, remains closely tied to President Trump, who campaigned alongside him at a September rally in Gastonia and urged voters to back him. But even Trump has sounded uneasy about the race, telling reporters earlier this month, "I am worried about him," while calling Whatley "a great man" who would make a good senator.

Part of Whatley's problem may simply be that voters don't know him yet. A separate Elon University poll found nearly half of North Carolinians say they've heard "nothing at all" about the RNC chairman, even as he closes in on the final stretch of a race that could help decide which party controls the Senate.

With Election Day set for November 3, Republicans now have barely two and a half weeks to decide whether to climb back into a race they appear to be walking away from — or to let one of the cycle's most closely watched Senate seats go quiet on the airwaves for good.