The campaign to be North Carolina’s next U.S. senator was supposed to be a billion-dollar barnburner. Instead, it’s been a dud.
Michael Whatley, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, tethered himself to President Donald Trump just as Trump’s popularity cratered. Polls show Whatley down by double digits, and experts have largely written him off. At a Whatley campaign event in mid-October, Trump voiced what most observers believe is inevitable: Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper is “going to become your senator, and it’s crazy.”
You could chalk up Cooper’s anticipated victory to his good fortune of running against an uninspired opponent in a strong Democratic midterm. But Cooper’s success owes more to the brand he’s built over the last 40 years than anything else.
Cooper has positioned himself as the state’s ideological center, palatable to the left but with enough vestigial blue-dog DNA to win moderates. Ever cautious, he projects calm, steady leadership and rarely says anything provocative or unguarded. Folksy but not gregarious, he’s a tonic to the belligerent Trump era, a cross between Andy Griffith and Mister Rogers. He’s “blissfully boring,” according to a New York Times columnist. He’s “what it would look like if a sweater designed a human,” as Slate memorably described him.
But Cooper’s public persona doesn’t always match his political style. He’s never been afraid to throw a punch—sometimes a dirty one. He leveled misleading attacks and leveraged his office’s powers to pressure fellow Democrats not to vote with Republicans. And despite his frequent nods toward bipartisanship, he had an acrimonious relationship with the GOP-led legislature and vetoed more bills than all previous North Carolina governors combined.
But the key to his success is his ability to play hardball while appearing above the fray.
“Cooper is very good at cultivating a presentation of self that lands as moderate,” Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper (no relation) told The Assembly. “He’s not, rhetorically. He’s not even rhetorically particularly interesting. That has allowed him to operate as a shrewd political operator—Mister Rogers with a switchblade.”
The Bulwark
Cooper, 69, often recalls his early years picking tobacco on his family’s Nash County farm. He also grew up surrounded by politics. His father was an attorney and political operative who co-chaired Jim Hunt’s 1976 gubernatorial campaign. After Cooper graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law, Hunt appointed him to two state boards and the Commission on the Future of North Carolina.
Cooper announced his first campaign for the state House at age 28. He easily defeated a veteran Democrat in the 1986 primary. He held office for the next 38 years, ascending from the legislature to attorney general to governor without losing an election.
In his second term as a lawmaker, Cooper joined with Republicans to oust the powerful Democratic House speaker and replace him with a reformer. Later, he pushed for a constitutional amendment to give the governor a veto. As a state senator, he also led Democrats’ gerrymandering efforts. He rejected calls for an independent redistricting commission, a position he reversed after Republicans gained power.
Cooper defeated Republican Daniel Boyce to become attorney general in 2000, though the campaign led to long-running litigation. Boyce accused Cooper of defaming him in a TV ad that misleadingly claimed Boyce’s firm had charged “$28,000 an hour in lawyer fees to the taxpayers.”
Cooper settled Boyce’s lawsuit in 2014, agreeing to apologize and pay $75,000.
By then, Cooper was the state’s most powerful Democrat and planning a 2016 run for governor. In a televised debate weeks before that election, Cooper alleged that the FBI was investigating then-Gov. Pat McCrory. That was false, though Cooper said he didn’t know it at the time. Republicans didn’t buy it.
“As the state’s attorney general, I would imagine that Roy Cooper had a pretty good knowledge of the facts,” said Andrew Dunn, a former Republican operative who writes the blog Longleaf Politics and authored a McCrory biography. “But he knew if he drops this bombshell in the middle of the debate, he’s going to be able to get the media to pick up on it, and then the headlines all become, ‘McCrory says he’s not subject of FBI probe.’”
Cooper won by 0.2 percentage points.
“I think he has a very Machiavellian view of politics, where the ends justify the means,” Dunn said.
The 2016 race was marked by heated debates over House Bill 2, the so-called bathroom bill, which had sparked widespread protests and boycotts that cost the state an estimated $3.76 billion. Before the election, McCrory accused Cooper of sabotaging efforts to mitigate the damage. A McCrory spokesman alleged that Cooper “lobbied Democrats to reject any form of compromise.”
When Republicans failed to partially repeal HB 2 after the election, they again accused Cooper of playing politics: “His senior staff told me a week ago that his political advisors strongly urged him not to compromise at all because the political issue would help Democrats in the 2018 election,” then-state Rep. Chuck McGrady posted on Twitter.
Cooper blamed Republicans. After all, they had supermajorities in both chambers. The two sides eventually reached an agreement, but the imbroglio helped cement his combative relationship with Republican lawmakers, who he believed—not without reason—weren’t interested in cooperating. Even before Cooper took office, Republicans held a special session to strip his powers, sparking a years-long legal battle.
“Cooper is very good at cultivating a presentation of self that lands as moderate.”
Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper
Still, Cooper’s approach contrasts sharply with that of his more convivial successor, Democrat Josh Stein. “I talked to Gov. Stein more in six weeks than I talked to Cooper in eight years,” a senior Republican lawmaker told The Assembly.
Cooper, however, portrayed himself as a bulwark against Republican extremism on everything from budgets to private school vouchers, taxes to Medicaid, immigration enforcement to abortion. He vetoed 104 bills. Lawmakers overrode half of them—all during Cooper’s first two and final two years, when Republicans had supermajorities.
“I have stood up to Republicans when I believe they are wrong, and I have worked with them when we knew we had a mission, and I believed they agreed with me on doing something that’s right,” Cooper told an Assembly reporter this week. “I’m gonna take that same spirit with me to Washington.”
Carrots and Sticks
By design, North Carolina has one of the country’s weakest governors. Cooper’s authority rested on his bully pulpit and the strength of his veto. To stay relevant, he needed to keep legislative Democrats in line.
After taking office, Cooper used his formidable political machine to that end. His office functioned as legislative Democrats’ whip operation, rounding up votes and pressuring wavering lawmakers using a variety of carrots and sticks.
Cooper’s team controlled access to Cabinet secretaries and nominations for the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the state’s highest civilian honor, according to a current and a former Democratic lawmaker. His lieutenants, meanwhile, berated Democrats who ran afoul of the governor.
“There were three times that I got crosswise with Cooper over issues where I either made public statements or took votes against what the governor wanted,” said a former Democratic lawmaker. “Each of those three times, I got very clear contact from other people about how unhappy they were with me.”
But the lawmaker did not hear from Cooper himself. “The governor played nice with me each time and gave me the, ‘Well, I understand that you have to do what you have to do.’”
“Nothing sticks to that guy,” the former lawmaker added. “Even with my personal conflicts, disappointments, whatever, with Cooper, I’m still like, ‘I love Roy Cooper.’”
But Cooper’s biggest advantage was his deep-pocketed political operation, which he leveraged to help friends or punish dissidents—including by recruiting primary challengers.
“I think he has a very Machiavellian view of politics, where the ends justify the means.”
Conservative writer Andrew Dunn
In 2022, Cooper targeted Kirk deViere, a Democratic senator from Fayetteville who voted with Republicans to pass their budget. DeViere said he did so to secure a voice in future budget negotiations, but Democrats thought he’d cost them leverage.
Cooper backed Val Applewhite in the Democratic primary, and his allies poured money and resources into her campaign. Applewhite prevailed by nearly 20 points. “Many times I stood shoulder to shoulder with the governor and leaders of my caucus, but yet I was made an example of,” deViere later told The Assembly.
Cooper said at the time that he endorsed Applewhite because she “isn’t afraid to stand up to right-wing Republicans.” But his move was risky. He elbowed out an incumbent while Democrats faced a difficult midterm, and his party funneled more than $1.6 million to Applewhite in the general election. She won by 5 points, but that money didn’t go to four House candidates who lost by fewer than 1,000 votes.
As it turned out, Democrats needed at least one of those seats. In early 2023, newly elected state Rep. Tricia Cotham switched parties. Her defection gave House Republicans a supermajority. During a press conference, Cotham said her breaking point came when liberal groups attacked her for missing a veto-override vote. She said she was getting treatment for long COVID.
Cotham also blamed Cooper. “It became very clear to me early on in January that you’d better vote in line with everything Gov. Cooper tells you to do, from signing on to bills, to he wanted to pick your seat on the House floor, to your committee requests,” Cotham said. (Cooper did not decide seating arrangements.)
“If you don’t do exactly what the Democrats want you to do, they will try to bully you,” Cotham added. “They will try to cast you aside.”
A spokesperson told The Assembly in 2023 that Cooper’s office had reached out to Cotham more than a dozen times before her party switch to mollify her concerns, but she never responded.
“Look, when you have to do tough things,” Cooper said this week, “you’re gonna get people mad.”
The Secret
Cooper frustrated Republicans. They believed he got a pass on his own controversies, especially the state’s troubled hurricane recovery efforts. They also chafed at how he took credit for the state’s successes while labeling them extremists over abortion, vouchers, and Medicaid expansion.
“If you look at Twitter accounts from the right, they are infuriated that people don’t see Roy Cooper for the shrewd political operator that they think he is,” said Chris Cooper, the political scientist. “They are infuriated that Mister Rogers is the selling point. They don’t understand why other people don’t see it.”
Cooper left the governor’s office at the end of 2024 with an approval rating over 50%. During the Senate campaign, however, conservatives have painted him as a left-wing ideologue and called him the “worst governor in the history of North Carolina.” They claimed he released vicious killers from prison (including, follow-up reporting showed, one who was actually released in South Carolina). They also insinuated that he might have dementia and was campaigning “from his basement.”
In effect, they tried to convince voters that the Cooper they liked was an illusion.
“Republicans should have known going in that Cooper won two races for governor,” Dunn said. “The voters of the state of North Carolina think he did a good enough job as governor that trying to tear that down was not going to work.”
Whatley’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
“I have stood up to Republicans when I believe they are wrong, and I have worked with them when we knew we had a mission, and I believed they agreed with me on doing something that’s right.”
Former Gov. Roy Cooper
Then again, Republicans have spent the last decade trying to land a haymaker on Cooper, to no avail. Dunn said he’s not sure why. “If I had the answer to that, I would be a high-dollar political consultant with a ton of money,” he said. “I’m baffled by it, just like I think everybody in the Republican Party is baffled by it.”
Cooper has convinced voters that he’s the adult in a room of petulant children, and voters aren’t about to change their minds.
“I always say that he is moderate in demeanor, but not moderate in his policies,” Dunn added. “And a lot of [voters] are looking for stability. They are looking for calmness. They are looking for reasonableness. And Cooper’s disposition is very much in that line.”
Carter Wrenn, a veteran Republican strategist, says the secret to Cooper’s success is simple: He’s authentic.
“Roy really is a small-town, rural, Eastern North Carolina country boy, and that’s how he comes across,” Wrenn said. “He hasn’t tried to change that or hide that. He’s never tried to sell a false version of himself.”
That appeals to the independents who decide elections, Wrenn said: “They just don’t like politics at all today. They look at it and say it’s broken, it’s corrupt, you can’t trust them, it’s rude, it’s abusive. They don’t see Roy as one of those politicians they dislike. They don’t agree with him on everything, but they think he’s a decent guy.”
Cooper might play hardball. But voters see Mister Rogers.
“He’s able to do that because both sides of that are real,” Chris Cooper said. “The mistake many politicians make is they lead with a switchblade, and he doesn’t. He leads with a sweater vest.”
Additional reporting by Bryan Anderson.
