Roy Cooper

For other people named Roy Cooper, see Roy Cooper (disambiguation).

Roy Cooper
File:Gov. Roy Cooper.jpg
75th Governor of North Carolina
Incumbent
Assumed office January 1, 2017
Lieutenant	Dan Forest
Preceded by	Pat McCrory
49th Attorney General of North Carolina
In office January 1, 2001 – January 1, 2017
Governor	Mike Easley Bev Perdue Pat McCrory
Preceded by	Mike Easley
Succeeded by	Josh Stein
Member of the North Carolina Senate from the 10th district
In office February 21, 1991 – January 1, 2001
Preceded by	Jim Ezzell
Succeeded by	A. B. Swindell
Member of the North Carolina House of Representatives from the 72nd district
In office February 9, 1987 – February 21, 1991
Preceded by	Allen Barbee
Succeeded by	Edward McGee
Personal details
Born	Roy Asberry Cooper III (1957-06-13) June 13, 1957 Nashville, North Carolina, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Kristin Bernhardt
Children	3
Residence	Executive Mansion
Education	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (BA, JD)
Signature
Website	Government website

Roy Asberry Cooper III (born June 13, 1957) is an American politician and attorney serving as the 75th Governor of North Carolina since January 1, 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Cooper had previously served as the elected Attorney General of North Carolina since 2001. Prior to that, he served in the General Assembly in both the North Carolina House of Representatives and the North Carolina Senate.

He narrowly defeated Republican incumbent Pat McCrory for the governorship in the 2016 election. On December 5, McCrory conceded the election, making Cooper the first challenger since 1850 to defeat a sitting North Carolina Governor. Cooper took office on January 1, 2017. The Republican-dominated legislature passed bills in a special session before he took office to reduce his power. The legislature has overridden several of his vetoes of legislation.

Early life and education

Cooper was born in Nash County, North Carolina, the son of Beverly Thorne Batchelor, a school teacher, and Roy Asberry Cooper Jr. He was raised in a rural community and worked in tobacco fields during the summer as a teenager. He received the Morehead Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergraduate studies. He was elected as the president of the university's Young Democrats. He also earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of North Carolina School of Law.

State legislature

After practicing law with his family's law firm for a number of years, Cooper was elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1986. He was appointed to the North Carolina Senate in 1991 to fill a remaining term of a seat that was vacated. In 1997, he was elected as Democratic Majority Leader of the state Senate. He continued to practice law as the managing partner of the law firm Fields & Cooper in Rocky Mount and Nashville, North Carolina.

North Carolina Attorney General

Elections

Cooper was elected North Carolina Attorney General in November 2000 and took office on January 6, 2001; he was re-elected for a second four-year term in 2004. Cooper was mentioned as a possible Democratic candidate for North Carolina governor in 2008, but he decided to run for re-election as Attorney General instead. He was easily re-elected, garnering more votes than any other statewide candidate in the 2008 Attorney General election.

Both state and national Democrats attempted to recruit him to run against Republican US Senator Richard Burr in 2010, but he declined. In 2012 politicians suggested him as a possible candidate for Governor of North Carolina after incumbent Governor Bev Perdue announced her retirement, but Cooper declined to run. His political consultant announced in 2011 that Cooper would seek a fourth term in 2012. He was unopposed in both the Democratic primary and the general election. In the November 2012 elections, Cooper received 2,828,941 votes.

Tenure

Attorney General Roy Cooper in 2009

In January 2007, when Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong asked to be recused from dealing with the Duke lacrosse case, Attorney General Cooper's office assumed responsibility for the case. On April 11, 2007, Cooper dismissed the case against the Duke lacrosse team players, declaring them "innocent" and victims of a "tragic rush to accuse". Two days following the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting he created the Campus Safety Task Force to analyze school shootings and make policy recommendations to help the government prevent and respond to them. The committee delivered its report to him in January 2008. Following the release of the task force's findings, Cooper assisted members of the North Carolina General Assembly in passing a law which required court clerks to record involuntary commitments in a national gun permit database.

Following a decision in 2010 by a three-judge panel to exonerate Gregor Taylor, who had served nearly seventeen years for the first-degree murder of Jaquetta Thomas, Cooper ordered an audit after it was learned that officials at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation forensic lab had withheld information. This suppression of evidence had contributed to Taylor's conviction for murder. The audit was released in 2010; it found that it had been common practice for two decades for a select group of agents within the State Bureau of Investigation to withhold information. In addition, they did not keep up with scientific standards and the latest tests. The two investigators, Chris Swecker and Micheal Fox, cited almost 230 cases that were tainted by these actions. Three persons convicted in such cases had been executed; 80 defendants convicted were still serving time in prison. A massive state effort was undertaken to follow up on their cases.

Cooper argued his first case before the United States Supreme Court, J. D. B. v. North Carolina, in 2011, a case related to Miranda rights in juvenile cases. The Court ruled 5–4 against North Carolina.

Governor of North Carolina

Elections

2016

Main article: 2016 North Carolina gubernatorial election

Roy Cooper for Governor logo

Cooper campaigning in October 2016

Cooper ran for Governor of North Carolina in the 2016 election against incumbent Republican Pat McCrory. In March 2016, the Republican-dominated North Carolina General Assembly passed the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act (commonly known as "House Bill 2"). Numerous corporations began boycotting the state in protest of the law, cancelling job investment and expansion plans. As a result of the economic damage caused by the law, McCrory's approval rating dramatically fell in the months preceding the election. The election was extremely close. After an extended legal battle, McCrory conceded the election to Cooper on December 5. Out of 4.7 million total ballots, Cooper won by a margin 10,227 votes. He garnered a majority of the votes in Mecklenburg, Wake, Guilford, Forsyth, Cumberland, Durham and Buncombe counties (the seven most populous), but lost to McCrory in the other 93.

Transition

Dismayed by Cooper's win, the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed special legislation before he was inaugurated to reduce the power of the governor's office. In what The New York Times described as a "surprise special session", Republican legislators moved to strip away Cooper's powers before he would assume the governorship on January 1, 2017. Throughout the month of December, Cooper oversaw an attempt to repeal the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act. The repeal attempt failed as a deal between state Republican and Democratic lawmakers and Charlotte officials fell apart.

Tenure

Governor Cooper, Dan Forest and Thom Tillis meet with President Donald Trump, December 2018

After taking office, as of January 6, 2017, Cooper requested federal approval for Medicaid coverage expansion in North Carolina. Effective January 15, however, a federal judge halted Cooper's request, an order that expired on January 29. In his first months in office Cooper focused on repealing the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act. After long negotiations with Republican state legislators, in late March Cooper agreed to sign a law that prohibited North Carolina cities from passing local ordinances pertaining to public accommodations or employment practices for three years in exchange for the reversal of the facilities act. On May 9, 2017, President Donald Trump appointed Cooper to a commission tasked with reducing opioid addiction.

After the Supreme Court of the United States declared North Carolina's legislative maps to be unconstitutional, Cooper called for a special redistricting session on June 7, 2017. However, the Republican Party-dominated House and Senate cancelled the session, calling it "unconstitutional". On June 29, Cooper signed the STOP Act, an overhaul of the prescribing and dispensing regulations of opioids.

On July 1, Cooper signed a bill to allow alcohol sales after 10 AM on Sundays, nicknamed the "Brunch Bill" On July 11, Cooper signed "Britney's Law," which states a homicide is first-degree murder if the killing was committed with malice and the defendant has been convicted before of domestic violence or stalking of the victim. Cooper also signed two additional bills to allow domestic violence protective orders granted by a judge to fully go into effect even when they're under appeal and to expand the state's "revenge porn" law from cases involving former lovers to those involving strangers. On July 12, Cooper signed a bill that would add lessons on what to do when pulled over by law enforcement to the state's driver's education curriculum. The bill passed both chambers unanimously.

On July 26, 2017, Cooper signed a bill to mount cameras on school buses in order to reduce drivers who illegally pass stopped school buses. On August 31, 2017, he declared a state of emergency due to plummeting gas supply, which was rescinded on September 18.

Cooper was elected by his fellow Appalachian governors as co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission for 2019, making him the first North Carolina governor to co-chair the ARC since Jim Hunt in 1978. In the November 2018 elections, the Republican Party lost seats in the General Assembly, ending its supermajorities in both houses and rendering it unable to override gubernatorial vetoes. On March 6, 2019, Cooper proposed a $25.2 billion budget for the year. It included salary increases for public school teachers and state workers, expansion of Medicaid, and a $3.9 billion bond (subject to a referendum) to help fund school construction and local infrastructure projects. Cooper stated that he was confident he could get the legislature, without enough Republican members to override a veto, to implement some of his ideas.

Vetoes

Cooper's first veto as North Carolina Governor was of a bill that would make elections to the North Carolina Superior Court and to the District Court partisan again, after being conducted on a nonpartisan basis for many years. The Republican-dominated state House voted to override the veto on March 22, 2017. The state Senate followed suit on March 23, which resulted in the bill becoming law over the Governor's objections.

Cooper vetoed a bill on April 21, 2017, to reduce the size of the North Carolina Court of Appeals by three judges. The veto was overridden on April 26. He also vetoed a bill on April 21, 2017, that would create a new State Board of Elections (and new county boards of elections) split evenly between the Republicans and the Democrats. It would replace the longstanding system that gave the party of the Governor of North Carolina a majority on the board. Both houses of the legislature, which are Republican-dominated, voted to override the veto on April 24 and 25.

Cooper also vetoed a bill that would limit individuals' ability to sue hog farms. This veto was also overridden by the legislature. On June 27, Cooper vetoed the proposed state budget, which he had called 'Irresponsible' the day before. In his veto message, Cooper cited the budget's income tax cuts and argued it "lacks structural integrity by failing to account for population growth, inflation and looming federal reductions, by using one-time revenue for recurring expenses, and by adopting a tax plan that will cause the state to fail to fund promised teacher salary increases in future years" and the proposed bill included "provisions that infringe upon the governor's ability to faithfully execute the laws, including the administration of this Act, as required by the Constitution, and violating the separation of powers." The Republican-majority legislature voted to override the budget veto the next day.

In July 2017, Cooper vetoed a bill to authorize nonprofit organizations to operate "game nights", saying it would unintentionally create a new opportunity for the video poker industry.

In December 2018, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill that would require new primary elections if a do-over election was called in the 9th district election. Cooper vetoed the bill due to a provision that made campaign finance investigations less public, but the General Assembly overrode his veto.

In total, during his first two years in office (while Republicans held supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature), Cooper vetoed 28 bills, 23 of which were overriden by the legislature.

Personal life

Roy Cooper and his family at a campaign rally, November 2016

Roy Cooper is married to Kristin Cooper (née Bernhardt), who worked as a guardian ad litem for foster children in Wake County. The couple has three daughters—Hilary, Natalie, and Claire—who all graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They reside in the Executive Mansion. Cooper has taught Sunday school classes, serving as a deacon and elder.

Electoral history

2000 North Carolina Attorney General election

Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Democratic	Roy Cooper	1,446,793	51.21
	Republican	Dan Boyce	1,310,845	46.40
	Reform	Margaret Palms	67,536	2.39
Total votes			2,825,174	100.00

2004 North Carolina Attorney General election

Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Democratic	Roy Cooper (inc.)	1,872,097	55.61
	Republican	Joe Knott	1,494,121	44.39
Total votes			3,366,218	100.00

2008 North Carolina Attorney General election

Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Democratic	Roy Cooper (inc.)	2,538,178	61.10
	Republican	Bob Crumley	1,615,762	38.90
Total votes			4,153,940	100.00

2012 North Carolina Attorney General election

Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Democratic	Roy Cooper (inc.)	2,828,941	100.00
Total votes			2,828,941	100.00

2016 North Carolina Democratic gubernatorial primary

Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Democratic	Roy Cooper	710,658	68.70
	Democratic	Ken Spaulding	323,774	31.30
Total votes			1,034,432	100.00

2016 North Carolina gubernatorial election

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Democratic	Roy Cooper	2,309,162	49.02	+5.79%
	Republican	Pat McCrory	2,298,881	48.80	−5.82%
	Libertarian	Lon Cecil	102,978	2.19	+0.06%
Margin of victory			10,281	0.22	−7.92%
Turnout			4,711,021	68.98	+1.68%
	Democratic gain from Republican

References

Works cited

• Weichelt, Katie (2018). "North Carolina Gubernatorial Election, 2016". Atlas of the 2016 Elections. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781538104231. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• West, Darrell M. (2014). Going Mobile: How Wireless Technology is Reshaping Our Lives. Brookings Institution Press. ISBN 9780815726265. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• NC Governor Roy Cooper (Official government site)
• Roy Cooper for Governor (Official campaign site)
• Roy Cooper at Curlie
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Twitter
• Facebook