(The Center Square) – In the last 125 years, only one of the 21 Democrats serving North Carolina as governor faced the same challenge as Roy Cooper.
The Nash County native, however, doesn’t lose elections. So unlike Bev Perdue, the who led the state from 2009-12, Cooper turned back the Republican lieutenant governor after four years and fought for survival against Grand Old Party majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly for two terms – a political mountain that simply didn’t exist between the time of Reconstruction after the Civil War and the 2010 midterms.
Cooper, 67, leaves office this week, having exhausted the consecutive two-term maximum. He could come back for more, as Jim Hunt famously did in 1992., or shoot for the U.S. Senate in 2026, or ride the chatter of his vice president speculation this year – he was the last speaker before Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention – toward the White House.
The Center Square queried more than 20 leaders among the Council of State, state Senate and House of Representatives, and veteran North Carolina politicos seeking assessments of the governor’s work. Consensus, from both sides of the political aisle, is he was inherently challenged by the strength of the General Assembly and faithfully fought for those with whom he exchanged support.
He exits claiming wins of Medicaid expansion, cumulative raises of 19% for teachers, and dismantling of the infamous bathroom bill, also known as House Bill 2, that now appears about eight years ahead of its time. The legislation didn’t allow boys and men to enter private spaces of the opposite sex by saying they were girls or women.
His losses are led by universal school choice, photo identification for voting, deregulation and abortion. The national move on the protection of women’s spaces is poised to erode a similar battle he won on HB2.
A lawyer by trade, his “sue until it’s blue” approach put many decisions in courtrooms rather than the Capitol or Legislative Building. The tactic garnered success when the state Supreme Court grew to 6-1 majority Democrats, but lost steam during the COVID-19 era as it pivoted to 5-2 Republicans.
“As we work to protect our progress we must also build on our success,” Cooper said at his farewell address before Christmas. “And though more challenges lie before us, I know we often find a path to success carved on finding common ground. Although we must adhere to our values and stand up for what we believe, we cannot allow the divisive tenor of today’s politics to rule the day.”
Health care
State Sen. Dan Blue, outgoing Democratic leader of the chamber and winner of a ninth term last month, says Cooper upheld values and steered a brighter future.
“He worked tirelessly to achieve transformative milestones, including expanding Medicaid to improve health care for hundreds of thousands of people, brokering a compromise on HB2 that helped restore North Carolina’s reputation, and championing landmark environmental policies,” he said. “His leadership has set us on one of the nation’s most ambitious paths for carbon reduction, with a plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and he was equally aggressive in creating thousands of good-paying jobs that lay the foundation for a stronger, more resilient economy.”
Cooper, in The New York Times over the weekend, credits Medicaid expansion to legislative Republicans listening to their party’s county commissioners with rural hospitals in danger of closing, and their party’s sheriffs with inmates needing health care. He also tied enactment to the biennial state budget for 2023-24.
“The Medicaid expansion was a big deal, but, realistically, this would have not happened were Republicans not ready to come to the table for various reasons – it’s not like some Cooper negotiating masterstroke made this happen,” Dr. Steven Greene, a political science professor at N.C. State University, told The Center Square. “I do think he did about as well as can be expected given the constraints, but those constraints were very substantial and the biggest factor shaping his governorship.”
Picking battles
Dallas Woodhouse, North Carolina executive director for American Majority Action, told The Center Square two measures are considered significant wins for him in his eight years. And Medicaid was only after “D.C. Republicans failed to repeal Obamacare or reform health care.”
Woodhouse also gives him his due as “an incredibly successful political talent.” Cooper remains with a perfect election record, unbeaten in 13 – three for North Carolina House of Representatives, four in the state Senate, four four-year terms for attorney general, and two four-year terms for governor.
His selective timing figures into that perfect equation.
But legacy isn’t automatic with tenure, says the former chairman of the state’s Republican Party.
“His most notable ‘success’ in the state Senate came as redistricting chairman in the early 1990s when he quarterbacked the most offensive state Senate gerrymander in state history,” Woodhouse said. “Cooper was for extreme partisan gerrymandering before he was against it. As governor, Cooper’s agenda was opposition to the Republican General Assembly.
“Constantly fighting the GOP legislature was good for his personal politics,” he added. “However, at most it simply delayed GOP priorities until a later date.”
Woodhouse said the governor ultimately lost the battles on voter ID, school vouchers, deregulation “and other matters” – all of which are now state law.
“Cooper could have more narrowly picked his battles and worked with Republicans to enact some of his own priorities, but he did not,” he said.
Finances
Cooper signed one two-year budget (2021-22), one midterm adjustment (2022) and allowed a two-year budget to become law without his signature (2023-24), the latter tied to his long-sought request for Medicaid expansion.
Cooper vetoed two-year budgets for 2017-18 and 2019-20, and midterm adjustments in 2018 and 2024. Veto overrides enacted two-year budget legislation for 2017-18 and midterm adjustments in 2018 and 2024.
Universal school choice came with the 2023 action without his signature, and the 2024 override provided $463 million to clear the popular option chosen by some 55,000 who remained on the Opportunity Scholarship waiting list.
Because of the July 14, 2016, signing of a law by Republican former Gov. Pat McCrory, the state government avoided shutdown during a three-year budget impasse that began after Cooper’s veto in 2019. Instead, the law allowed the state to operate on the previous spending plan.
Medicaid expansion and teacher pay were foremost in Cooper’s budget battles with Republican legislative leaders. Because he wanted more for them, Cooper is on record for vetoes of teacher pay increases Republicans delivered – in fact, more veto stamps than signatures.
“Public service is not for the faint of heart,” Secretary of State Elaine Marshall said to Cooper at this month’s meeting of the Council of State, “and you have continued to position North Carolina to be a leader in this nation and globally. North Carolina has faced unprecedented challenges, and you have led with a steady hand and a compassionate heart.”
And he used all the power he could muster to do it.
Authority
In addition to litigation, Cooper’s governance included 328 executive orders. His supporters liked them during the COVID-19 era, while critics chastised him for picking business winners and losers, telling families to stay apart at holidays, and issuing stay-at-home orders that blanketed the state.
Many businesses, houses of faith and small-town civic clubs never recovered from his directives.
Of the record 104 vetoes from Cooper, 52 still became law through the General Assembly’s override. All 29 vetoes handed down over the last two years still became law. And while party lines were strong, they were not 100%.
At least one Democrat voted to override on 11 of 23 vetoes in the 2017-18 session; both vetoes of the 2018 first extra session; and 18 of 29 vetoes in the 2023-24 session.
Both chambers had at least one Democrat against his veto five times in 2017-18 and three times in 2023-24.
Notable within those numbers was one member of each chamber against Cooper’s veto of implementing voter ID after 55.5% of the more than 3.6 million voters supported the measure.
Two House Democrats each time were against Cooper’s vetoes of the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, Gender Transition/Minors, Charter School Review Board, and Charter School Omnibus.
“We’ve built a North Carolina that’s a healthier, better-educated place where people have more money in their pockets,” Cooper said in his farewell. “And we stand ready to welcome prosperity with open arms for generations to come.”
Businesses
From the 1998 midterms through the 2008 general election, North Carolinians elected a trifecta of Democrats’ and their policies – majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, and the party in the governor’s office. At the 2010 midterms, Republicans won both chambers and started enacting legislation to change the budget deficit that ranged between $800 million and $1.2 billion.
In less than 15 years, the turnaround was roughly $6 billion to a surplus of $5 billion. That came in handy for Hurricane Helene recovery, with $1.1 billion already tapped.
Business industry awards piled high in that time, led by the annual America’s Top States for Business as ranked by CNBC. The last three years were No. 2 this year and No. 1 each before it. Cooper’s years include 12th in 2013, ninth in 2015 and 2018, and top five in the remainder.
North Carolina is one of only 13 states with a AAA rating from all three major national bond rating agencies – Moody’s Investors Service, Fitch Ratings, and S&P Global Ratings.
Cooper takes credit for the business success; so do Republican legislators. The difference is the governor does so in the same breath as fearmongering GOP policies.
“He not only lifted our state from the malaise left by House Bill 2 – he oversaw billions of dollars in new economic development projects, particularly industries of the future like semiconductors and clean energy,” state Rep. Robert Reives, D-Chatham, told The Center Square. He’s the Democratic leader of the chamber, about to start his seventh term next month.
Cooper also claimed promises of 17,708 jobs, along with investments of $31.78 billion, with collective announcements by Toyota, Apple, FujiFilm Diosynth, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Wolfspeed, Boom Supersonic, Natron Energy and Boviet Solar. Conspicuous by absence from the governor’s release hailing those was VinFast, the $1.2 billion taxpayer subsidy recipient with one-time plans for a $4 billion plant in Moncure sporting 7,500 jobs.
VinFast is still coming, but didn’t start production as intended in the summer.
Remembrances
“He overcame a General Assembly that worked overtime to strip him of his constitutional powers and yet managed to bring together a bipartisan coalition to expand Medicaid, helping more than 600,000 North Carolinians access health care so far,” Reives said. “Governor Cooper is a model for how we can get big things done in the South, without compromising on our core values.”
Cooper is the third Democratic governor during Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler’s two-decade tenure. He’ll start his sixth term with another in January, hopeful for similar collegiality with Josh Stein.
“Through all the time, we treated each other with respect,” Troxler told The Center Square. “We didn’t always agree on everything, but it was never personal, and I appreciated his professionalism whenever we didn’t totally agree on issues.”
Woodhouse says history won’t care about politically opposing the other side and losing. And, thus, he says there’s little care about the governing record.
It leaves a mark that is, for the most part as Greene says, “about as well as can be expected.”
“I think the big story is just how constrained Cooper was by facing a Republican majority for his whole tenure as governor and a supermajority for much of that period,” he said. “There’s just only so much a governor can do under these circumstances.”