Michael Whatley, chair of the Republican National Committee, plans to launch a campaign for Senate in North Carolina after Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, chose not to run, according to three people familiar with the decisions who spoke on the condition of anonymity because those plans have not been publicly announced. The decisions, first reported by Politico , will accelerate a race to replace Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), who announced last month he would not seek reelection to a third term after opposing President Donald Trump’s signature tax and immigration legislation over its deep cuts to Medicaid. Trump has been eager to replace Tillis with someone more loyal to his agenda, while Democrats see the seat as a prime pickup opportunity — and crucial if they want to retake the Senate majority — given that Trump won the state by fewer than 10 percentage points last year. Trump had threatened to back a primary challenger to Tillis and claimed that “ numerous people ” had come forward wanting to run. He later said his “first choice” candidate would be Lara Trump, who is married to his son Eric. “She’s a great person, Lara Trump. I mean, that would always be my first choice,” Trump told reporters this month. “But she doesn’t live there now, but she’s there all the time, her parents are there, you know, she really knows North Carolina well.” Trump presidency Former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper, who has been eyed as a possible Democratic candidate for Senate, will make his intentions known in the coming days, his spokesman Morgan Jackson said. Democrats cast the news Thursday as a positive sign for their efforts to flip the seat. “After Senator Tillis decided to retire rather than run on the GOP’s toxic Medicaid cuts, Republicans are facing the latest in a string of embarrassing recruitment failures as they lose their ‘first choice’ candidate to replace him,” Maeve Coyle, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement.