All eyes were on North Carolina this week, as Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley formally announced a run for Senate in the key battleground state, backed with an endorsement from Donald Trump.

Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, has also announced plans to run, kicking off what’s expected to be among the most-watched races of the 2026 midterms.

Whatley has yet to release the details of his platform. But a piece of the top GOP official’s past may inform his approach to issues like climate change and renewable energy in North Carolina, a state still recovering from September’s Hurricane Helene.

Before his journey into Republican leadership—first as chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, later as general counsel and chair of the RNC—Whatley, according to his LinkedIn profile, worked for more than 15 years at HBW Resources, a PR and lobbying firm focused on energy and transportation policy. There, his profile shows, Whatley took a position as executive vice president of a mysterious organization created and staffed by HBW, the Houston-registered nonprofit Consumer Energy Alliance.

On its website, Consumer Energy Alliance claims to advocate for “sensible energy policy,” and has branded itself the “voice of the energy consumer.” But according to tax records and media reports over the last 15 years, the firm has close ties to the fossil fuel industry and a record of questionable, behind-the-scenes tactics to influence energy policy.

HBW asserts on its website that it “built Consumer Energy Alliance from the ground up,” claiming that the group represents 550,000 individuals and “nearly 300 companies spanning America’s economy.” “We build organizations with real governance and corporate structures, real grassroots and grasstops support, and run them with real people,” HBW’s site reads. “We don’t build a website, call a staff member the executive director and pretend that’s real.” 

In fact, almost all of Consumer Energy Alliance’s staff also hold roles at HBW, as the Center for Public Integrity reported in 2014, blurring the lines between the two organizations. Whatley himself worked at the nonprofit from 2008 to 2019, during which time he also maintained a position as a partner at HBW.

Consumer Energy Alliance’s nonprofit status means it isn’t required to disclose its funders—but as the Washington Post noted earlier this year, HBW lobbies on behalf of many fossil fuel clients, and Consumer Energy Alliance has reportedly received funding from Big Oil industry groups like American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute. Its current members include fossil fuel trade groups, utilities, and oil and gas corporations like Chevron, Shell, and ExxonMobil.

Although the group claims to advocate for “affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy solutions,” much of its work has focused on opposing climate regulations and expanding access to fossil fuels.

In 2011, for instance, Salon reported that it had obtained hundreds of pages of email records between then–HBW staffer Whatley and his friend Gary Mar, a Canadian diplomat, including discussions of plans to oppose low-carbon fuel standards under consideration in several US states in 2009 and 2010. Whatley reportedly wrote to Mar about the possibility of “conducting a grassroots operation” in “target states” that would “generate significant opposition” to the new standards. Later, after federal lawmakers expressed interest in a low-carbon fuel standard, Consumer Energy Alliance launched a $1 million radio and TV ad campaign in four states claiming that the standards would “further damage our ailing economy,” according to the Hill. “Low-carbon fuel standards may sound like a good idea,” the ad reportedly said, “but as usual, Congress wants you to pay the price.”

Further details of the group’s influence came to light in 2014, when the Center for Public Integrity reported that Consumer Energy Alliance and HBW worked closely with the governors of eight states, including North Carolina, to lobby the Obama administration to expand offshore drilling operations in US waters. Consumer Energy Alliance reportedly provided talking points and research to the governors, some of whom relied on the materials in at least one meeting with then–Interior Secretary Sally Jewell—giving industry further back-door access to the administration.

Several more recent media reports raise further ethical questions about the nonprofit’s advocacy tactics.

In 2016, the Toledo Blade reported that Consumer Energy Alliance may have sent the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hundreds of allegedly fraudulent letters in support of a proposed natural gas pipeline to be built between Ohio and Michigan. Some of the letters appeared to come from Ohio residents—but were, according to the Blade, submitted without the senders’ knowledge, including one letter supposedly from an Ohio man who had died in 1998.

Similar issues arose in 2023 with a Consumer Energy Alliance letter campaign supporting fracking in Ohio state parks, with dozens of Ohioans telling Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer, a Cleveland newspaper, that their names were used without permission. (Consumer Energy Alliance has denied any wrongdoing in both cases, and has said that any errors in the letters were unintentional.)

Most recently, as the Washington Post reported in January, Consumer Energy Alliance helped launch an advocacy group called the Energy Poverty Awareness Center (EnPAC), “dedicated to advancing the prosperity of minority communities through reliable and affordable energy solutions,” led by former NFL player Gary Baxter. While higher energy costs do disproportionately impact Black and Brown communities, critics like the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters and the Energy and Policy Institute (EPI) call Consumer Energy Alliance a “front group” for industry; EPI has also accused Consumer Energy Alliance of packaging pro–fossil fuel objectives as social justice concerns.

(Neither Whatley, through the RNC, nor Consumer Energy Alliance responded to requests for comment from Mother Jones. In response to the Post‘s reporting, a Consumer Energy Alliance spokesperson characterized the group’s practices as “normal,” its involvement in EnPAC as “something that happens every day in advocacy,” and the Post‘s reporting as “a blatant attempt to generate a headline.”)

It wouldn’t be the first time Consumer Energy Alliance received this kind of criticism. In 2022, the group paid up to $8,000 for a Facebook advertisement featuring two businesswomen in the construction industry that linked fossil fuel access to feminism. “As two women, running a business in a male-dominated field is hard enough,” the ad, first surfaced by the Energy and Policy Institute, read. “Add in energy fluctuations and you’re not only responsible for your employees, but you’re also responsible for the impacts to your neighbors and your community.”

Outside of his work with Consumer Energy Alliance, Whatley has been noticeably quiet about climate change beyond objections to the potential impact of climate regulations on energy costs—at times laying out conflicting positions about renewable energy.

In a 2013 blog post for Consumer Energy Alliance, he responded to then-President Barack Obama’s 21-page “Climate Change Action Plan,” which Whatley described as an overstep of congressional authority (“the word ‘Congress’ isn’t used once,” he wrote, citing DC politics outlet National Journal) and a “mixed bag of incentive programs, new regulations and lofty goals.” Obama’s proposed limits on power plant emissions, Whatley argued, would mean “less fuel diversity and higher electricity costs”—although he conceded that the plan offered “some good news” in its goal to double renewable electricity generation by 2020, and especially its proposals to generate power on public lands, electrify dams, and streamline permitting.

Still, he concluded, “Every homeowner, business, manufacturer and electricity consumer will undoubtedly feel the painful effects of higher energy costs under the President’s proposed plan. Congress must take an active oversight role in order to prevent these negative ramifications.”