OPINION: Roy Cooper will be remembered as one of North Carolina’s most beloved governors

For two terms, Roy Cooper’s North Carolina prospered during pandemics, partisan firestorms, and more. He was the last line of defense against a power-drunk legislature. 

Gov. Roy Cooper gave what amounted to a farewell address Wednesday from his native Nash County. But for me and, I’d wager, a lot of North Carolinians, this is how we’ll remember Roy Cooper as North Carolina’s governor:

It was spring 2020. People were dying from COVID-19. The schools were closed. Cooper, a moderate Democrat with a prosecutor’s background, had, at that point, distinguished himself as governor not by what he’d done, but what he hadn’t. 

After all, it was the previous guy, Pat McCrory, who signed House Bill 2, the intrusive, anti-gay bathroom bill that cost the state billions in economic activity and a lot more than that in reputation. Cooper was against HB2 and helped repeal it—although not without some unpopular concessions to Republicans, like a three-year moratorium on local LGBTQ+ protections. 

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But the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic was when Roy Cooper, the inoffensive politician from Nashville, NC, became Roy Cooper, a virtually unbeatable candidate in North Carolina. Ask Dan Forest, the fundamentalist Christian who challenged him in the 2020 election and never really threatened to win.  

Some people shrink from a challenge. Others rise to it. Cooper did the latter, appearing almost daily to update the state’s death toll and hospitalization numbers, give guidance on staying safe, and, most importantly, to offer hope that we would re-emerge from the darkest days of the pandemic.

While his detractors coddled bogus conspiracy theories about COVID, Cooper was making his own version of Franklin Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” in a sterile government building in Raleigh. 

He was calm, confident, and, when he needed to be, firm—a serious leader surrounded by unserious people. North Carolinians were drowning in their own lungs, the victims of an unknown, contagious disease, and some people in the Republican Party wanted to have Fourth of July parades. 

“I will not risk the health of our people,” Cooper said in April 2020 like a scolding grandpa. That’s not often the right tone, but it was then.

READ MORE: In his last speech as governor, Roy Cooper reflects on past and hints at future

Cooper’s competency during the pandemic isn’t glamorous or sexy, but try dismissing it when dozens of North Carolinians are dying every day from a mysterious illness. His measured approach elevated him and he never really came back down, rising so far even as to be considered a potential vice presidential pick in 2024. 

It’s one of the reasons Cooper’s one of the most popular figures in a state that Trump has won three times, why even now he’s the greatest threat to incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis in 2026 and Republicans’ decade-long winning streak in US Senate races here. 

The “last line of defense” governor

Cooper isn’t without his critics. 

Some said he gave away too much when he compromised. And his success didn’t alleviate Democrats’ struggles in rural places, although that’s a problem for Democrats across the U.S. 

But no person or politician is perfect. And in his two terms, it’s hard to imagine a more effective, if not productive, governor—considering the opposing party held a powerful majority in both chambers of the state legislature. 

If Jim Hunt was the “education governor,” it sure helped that he had a legislature willing to work with him. Cooper never had that. He was a bulwark, the last line of defense for a power-drunk legislature safely gerrymandered into dominance. 

When HB2 cast North Carolina as a hateful state, Cooper played an integral part in repealing it. 

When the legislature’s budgets stripped public schools for parts and expanded privatized school choice options, he was an intractable voice for public education.  

And, most recently, when a brazenly partisan new law stripped powers from offices won by Democrats in November—under the guise of hurricane relief—Cooper called it the “sham” it was. 

Politics is often about “feel” more than policies, and lots of people in North Carolina felt like Cooper was a good person. I met a woman backstage at a media event this year who told me she was inclined to agree with the ultra-conservative Mark Robinson, but she “loved” Roy Cooper. “He just always does the right thing,” she told me. Go figure.

Perhaps Cooper’s most lasting legacy though will be his advocacy for Medicaid expansion. 

The historian Jill Lepore separates the American progressive from the populist because, while they both believe the working-class is getting ripped off, the progressive believes the government can fix their woes and the populist doesn’t. 

Anyone wanting to understand Cooper should see him then as a consummate progressive—with an eastern North Carolina accent.

Cooper saw in Medicaid expansion, a part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, a way for government to help people who couldn’t afford to see a doctor, one of the most basic things we can ask for. 

In the end, it wasn’t just about compassion. It was about logic. Republicans wastefully blocked expansion in North Carolina for years, even when the healthcare boost was fully funded by the federal government. They wanted to make a point about government spending, and they used poor people to make it. 

Fittingly, during his farewell address this week, Cooper talked about giving the state’s first Medicaid expansion card to Penny Wingard, a breast cancer survivor from Charlotte. 

“Medicaid expansion was always about the hard-working North Carolinians who desperately needed and deserved access to healthcare,” Cooper said.

Cooper never seemed like he used other people’s pain for a prop. And sometimes political messaging has an actual message.

During his farewell speech, Cooper also hinted at what’s next.

“We’re not done, I’m not done,“ he said, which is probably bad news if you’re Tillis, and good news for North Carolina. Because, for the last eight years, Cooper has been a genuine, thoughtful leader as North Carolina’s governor, and D.C. is filled with thoughtless frauds. 

If Cooper chooses otherwise, his legacy will be secure. He’ll be thought of as a decent, native North Carolinian who was true to his principles and compromised when he had to. 

That’s all you can ask for.

 

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