The exit interview: Roy Cooper looks back, looks forward
Gov. Roy Cooper, seen here at the historic Haywood County Courthouse in 2022, has left an indelible mark on the Tarheel State over his 40 years in public service.
Cory Vaillancourt photo
On Jan. 11, 2025 at 10 a.m., North Carolina will have a new governor for the first time in eight years — and what an eight years it’s been.
Born in Nashville, North Carolina in 1957, Cooper attended the University of North Carolina both for undergraduate studies as well as for his law degree. In 1986, he defeated a 12-term incumbent in the Democratic Primary Election for Nash County’s legislative seat, going on to serve two terms during an era when Democrats enjoyed a stranglehold on state government.
After the unexpected death of Sen. Jim Ezzell in 1991, Cooper was appointed to serve out the rest of Ezzell’s term. Cooper was in the Senate for a total of 10 years, the last four as majority leader.
In 2001, Cooper was elected the state’s 50th attorney general, serving a total of four terms through 2016 as Democratic control of state institutions waned. That year, Cooper filed to run for governor and defeated embattled Republican incumbent Pat McCrory by less than a quarter of a point — exactly 10,263 votes out of more than 4.7 million ballots cast.
Much of that campaign was about the controversial HB2, known as the “bathroom bill,” which prohibited transgender people from using public accommodations that don't match their birth gender. McCrory signed the bill, which Cooper called “a national embarrassment.” Economic fallout from the bill resulted in boycotts, corporate divestment and an estimated $5 billion impact to the state’s economy. The bill was subsequently repealed, returning the situation to status quo ante bellum and enshrining it as one of the most short-sighted political miscues in state history.
That election also firmly established Cooper as someone who could appeal not only to a Democratic base — he earned nearly 120,000 more votes than unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — but also to unaffiliated voters, now the state’s largest bloc. Cooper thus became one of few Democrats to win a gubernatorial election in a state won by Donald Trump.
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In 2020, Cooper’s margin for reelection was much greater, as he prevailed over his Republican lieutenant governor, Dan Forest, by 4.5 points and again strengthened his reputation as a Democrat who could earn electoral success in the purple-est of purple states — he outperformed then-President Donald Trump, who ultimately won the state, by more than 75,000 votes. During that election, Cooper was criticized by far-right conspiracy theorists for public health initiatives related to COVID-19, but he still earned more than a 51% share of the vote.
Having never lost an election, Cooper now leaves the office with a long list of achievements as governor in a state very different than the one in which he was born.
North Carolina is one of the nation’s most populous and fastest-growing states. It has been named “best for business” twice in the last few years and is now considered a national political battleground, resulting in Cooper’s brief consideration by Vice President Kamala Harris as a possible running mate in her ill-fated 2024 presidential bid.
Throughout his tenure, Cooper championed issues important to working-class North Carolinians, most importantly by adding more than 600,000 jobs and advocating for Medicaid expansion, higher teacher pay and increased access to pre-K while opposing the so-called “school choice” movement that gives taxpayer money to wealthy parents who send their children to schools that can — and do — discriminate against students for a litany of reasons.
Cooper also encouraged more than $24 billion in clean energy investment, an important step to preserve the state’s pristine mountains, waterways and coastal beaches that drive tourism-based economies from east to west.
Managing disasters, including two in Western North Carolina over the past three years, will also be part of Cooper’s legacy, but much will still be written as the region faces a recovery that, by all accounts, will take years. Cooper recently presented a plan, never embraced by legislators, to provide $3.9 billion in recovery assistance, including $475 million in direct grants to affected business owners who need help but don’t need more debt. The Republican-dominated General Assembly responded with a little over a billion dollars.
All of these accomplishments came with a Republican supermajority hell-bent on overriding every single veto Cooper ever issued — dozens.
The Smoky Mountain News spoke with Cooper on Dec. 13 about his legacy, his regrets and how he plans to spend the coming years.
The Smoky Mountain News: You've highlighted your achievements in Medicaid expansion, education funding, job creation, clean energy and disaster recovery efforts during your eight years as governor. Which do you consider your most important accomplishment for the state moving forward?
Gov. Roy Cooper: I think we had put together a way to form coalitions to get things done that we didn't think could get done. For example, with Medicaid expansion, I came into office with the legislature suing me to stop me from expanding Medicaid, and we ended six-and-a-half years later with those same legislators coming to the mansion for me to sign the Medicaid expansion bill that I asked them to pass.
We did that by forming coalitions of people in these Republicans legislators’ districts who let them know why we needed Medicaid expansion, keeping rural hospitals open, helping law enforcement, helping small businesses. I believe that will be the same strategy that we can use to get them to pay attention to quality child care and investment in public schools. That is the area right now where I think we are most in need.
As we continue to grow these jobs and making North Carolina a place where businesses want to be, we need people to have the education and training to get those jobs and parents need quality childcare so that they can get the employment, and businesses will need them in the workforce. So I think that strategy of convincing legislators on things that they originally don't want to do will be important for us going into the future.
SMN: Throughout your governorship, you faced a Republican-controlled legislature that at times significantly curtailed your powers, yet you’re still able to point to a long list of successes. What is it about Roy Cooper, the person, that made all that possible?
RC: I've always believed in trying to find consensus when we can, to make progress, even in the midst of the most extreme partisanship. I've done that my entire career, from being in private practice as an attorney, in the state legislature and as attorney general. The fact that we worked together with Republican legislators to provide performance-based incentives to attract jobs, and we were able to grow the number of jobs in North Carolina by 640,000, the fact that we worked with them to get this clean energy bill passed and Medicaid expansion passed, I think my desire to achieve consensus and to never give up helped in all of that.
I also had, I think, the best cabinet and governor staff in the history of the state. The team of people who worked with me has been extraordinary, and I'm very grateful for them.
SMN: Looking back, what do you think your administration's most significant shortcoming or missed opportunity was, and what lessons should your successor Josh Stein take from it?
RC: I'm deeply concerned that the legislature got away with believing the false narrative that's being pushed by right-wing groups and for-profit schools so that they voted to fund private school vouchers for the very wealthiest among us. That is such bad public policy.
In the first few years as governor, we worked with them on investment in teacher salaries. We were able to raise teacher salaries by 19% over the first few years, but these last few years where they have essentially given up on public schools, where 80-plus percent of our children still go by the way, to knuckle under to these extremists who want to provide these private school vouchers to the wealthy. That's just very disappointing, and Governor-elect Stein is going to have to make that one of his goals, just to help to form these coalitions throughout North Carolina that can convince Republican legislators that this is going to cause a massive budget hole, that children aren't going to get better educations and that we need to fund our public schools and make that a priority.
SMN: Most recently, you and Stein filed suit against lawmakers over the sham Helene relief bill, which also strips incoming Democrats of power before they take office. Compared to everything else you’ve done, where does this lawsuit rank in importance for how the state is governed moving forward?
RC: In the last few years, state legislators have made major changes to our system of government just to fit their partisan moment, and it's so important that we remember that people in both parties are going to be in the governor's office in the future, in the attorney general's office, in the state legislature, and there needs to be a balance of power so that government properly responds to the people. When you concentrate so much power in one branch of government, that makes the system fail at the end of the day. It's disappointing that they've done this yet again.
I do think good governors who are good at running the executive branch still make a tremendous difference in this state, but this constant erosion of authority makes it difficult when you think about the fact that they have decided that they were going to make the Highway Patrol independent, that they were going to appoint the commander of the Highway Patrol, that the only way that the Highway Patrol commander could be out of office would be through death or resignation or mental incompetence. That means — and not to say that he would —that the commander of the Highway Patrol could even commit criminal acts, and there would be no way to remove that person from authority.
These new laws they passed not only are bad ideas, they are poorly written. The state legislature is not supposed to enforce the law. The state legislature makes the law, and what they want to do is to both make the law and enforce the law, and that's not the way that a democracy works.
SMN: As you prepare to leave the executive mansion for the last time to focus on your private life, what do you envision as your role in public life over the next few years?
RC: First, I'm going to practice driving again [laughing]. I haven't driven in eight years, so I look forward to that and probably will do a little eastern North Carolina driving before I do some driving on the curvy roads in the mountains.
I am going to take a little bit of time, a couple of months, to make decisions about what I want to do next. I promised my family that I would.
I'm sure there are a number of opportunities and things that I could do. I want to keep making a difference, and I'm just going to take that time and make decisions then. What I've said was, I'm not going to make any decisions now. I'm going to make decisions later. First, I’ve got to run through the tape and finish this job as governor, and that's what I intend to do.
