Everyone in North Carolina seems to know Roy Cooper.
Michael Harrison, sitting in the front row of a recent gathering of volunteers for Mr. Cooper’s Democratic Senate campaign? His sister was Mr. Cooper’s high school classmate in the 1970s.
Cynthia Pitchford, making voter calls out of the cramped Nash County Democrats’ office? She knew Mr. Cooper’s mother, a teacher, and considered her a mentor.
Sean Gargan, voting early in Raleigh last week at the same polling place as the candidate? He met him through Mr. Cooper’s family’s involvement with a local theater. Mr. Cooper, in line behind him, asked after Mr. Gargan’s wife: “Where’s Beth?”
Mr. Cooper has built such a strong rapport with North Carolina voters over 38 years in elective office, including two terms as governor, that many across this perennial swing state believe he has all but put away this year’s Senate race.
He has led his Republican rival, Michael Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chairman, so consistently in polls that both parties pulled most of their advertising money weeks ago. He is seen as the likeliest Democrat to flip a Senate seat on Nov. 3, in a state that President Trump won three times and that both parties expected to be a battleground this year.
When Democratic canvassers hand fliers to voters, they immediately recognize Mr. Cooper’s face printed at the top, said State Representative Jordan Lopez of East Charlotte.
“The moment they see that, they say, ‘I’m voting for him,’” said Mr. Lopez, 28, who has been knocking on doors for Mr. Cooper and other Democrats.
Feeling good about North Carolina was hardly assured for Democrats at the start of the year. Although their party has held the governor’s office for most of the last 34 years, North Carolina has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 2008.
Mr. Cooper landed early on a succinct slogan, “Make Stuff Cost Less,” that proved prescient in encapsulating the Democrats’ economic message. He has avoided the factional politics that have gotten Democrats in trouble elsewhere, steering clear of progressive prescriptions such as single-payer health care, and promised to vote independently in the Senate.
Unaffiliated voters make up a plurality of North Carolina’s electorate; Mr. Cooper has won them in his past elections. He is so well known that some of his campaign signs just say “ROY.” Others say “COOP! There it is.”
His broad appeal goes beyond policy. He appears most excited when talking about the Carolina Hurricanes hockey team. He wears custom blue-and-white Air Jordans emblazoned with “DEM GOV” on the back. He pronounces his last name the eastern Carolina way, with a short vowel sound like in “foot” rather than in “coop.” (It sounds almost, but not quite, like “Cupper.”)
North Carolina voters describe Mr. Cooper as approachable, moderate and genuine. Those traits have made it difficult for Republicans to land their attacks on Mr. Cooper, whom they accuse of being soft on crime and radically leftist.
His mild manners and discipline — he rarely goes off message — belie adept skills honed over nearly four decades in politics. By his own admission, he ran for Senate because he thought he had “the best chance to win,” he told reporters last week in Rocky Mount, his hometown, about an hour east of Raleigh.
“I knew I had developed somewhat of a trust with people over the years,” he said. “I knew that they knew me. I also knew that tens of millions of dollars would come down on whoever our nominee was — and if people really didn’t know that nominee, it would be really hard for them to be able to break through it.”
A ‘Teflon’ candidate
National Democrats have tried to recruit Mr. Cooper for 15 years. He fended them off until last year. He left the governor’s office, spent a semester teaching health policy at Harvard and then said he would run for Senate.
His announcement came shortly after Senator Thom Tillis, the Republican incumbent, who had clashed with Mr. Trump, announced that he would retire, after the president had threatened him with a primary challenger.
Mr. Whatley, a first-time candidate, has campaigned as a loyal Trump supporter who is tough on crime. In a rally with Vice President JD Vance on Monday, Mr. Whatley called Mr. Cooper “the worst governor in the history of North Carolina.”
Few voters seem to share that view of Mr. Cooper. He was a law-and-order state attorney general for 16 years. As governor, he guided the state through the coronavirus pandemic and three major hurricanes, wearing button-downs branded with the state’s disaster-response logo. He had an approval rating of just above 50 percent several months after leaving office last year.
In the waning days of this year’s campaign, as Mr. Whatley’s chances have dimmed, some Republicans have portrayed Mr. Cooper, who is 69, as too old for the Senate, where the median age is about 67. Mr. Whatley is 58.
Mr. Cooper jogs onto the stage at his events and jokes in his stump speech about looking at the chairmen of Senate committees and thinking, “I might be a little young for this.”
He told reporters in Raleigh last week that he would “absolutely, yes” serve a full, six-year term. “I’m excited about doing that,” he said. “Maybe do another one. Who knows?”
In 2024, he was being vetted as a possible running mate to Vice President Kamala Harris but withdrew from consideration, saying it was not the right time for him to join a national ticket.
He has never lost an election. He won the governor’s race in 2016 by just 10,000 votes, defeating Pat McCrory, the incumbent Republican.
Mr. McCrory had faced national backlash over a law he signed that required people in publicly owned buildings to use restrooms that corresponded with the gender listed on their birth certificates. Mr. Cooper and Republican state lawmakers reached a deal to repeal the law in 2017.
Mr. McCrory said in an interview that Mr. Cooper had avoided talking about transgender rights this year “because public opinion has changed in the past decade” in Republicans’ favor. But he admitted that one of Mr. Cooper’s strengths was not letting himself get drawn into controversies.
“He’s been Teflon for 25 years,” Mr. McCrory said. “I’m a critic, but at the same time I admire how he does it. He did it to me, too: I couldn’t pin him on anything.”
A ‘country-politan’
Ask voters why they like Mr. Cooper, and they invariably mention perhaps his most significant accomplishment: expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which gave health coverage to more than 600,000 North Carolinians.
Over seven years, Mr. Cooper built a coalition of sheriffs, county commissioners and rural hospital administrators in Republican-leaning counties to persuade their Republican state lawmakers to drop their opposition in 2023.
“At the end of the day, their own constituents put the pressure on them to pass this legislation,” Mr. Cooper told reporters last month in Concord, northeast of Charlotte.
Mr. Cooper threw elbows at times in the state capital. At least twice, he backed primary challengers of Democratic lawmakers who sometimes voted with Republicans. The challengers won.
Mr. Cooper has become a mainstay in his leafy neighborhood near downtown Raleigh. Last week, a neighbor’s front yard was decorated for Halloween with a tombstone that read, “Don’t let democracy die.”
Mr. Cooper’s father was a country lawyer who owned a tobacco farm in rural Nash County; Mr. Cooper and his brother spent their summers there.
“We learned hard work,” Mr. Cooper told supporters in Rocky Mount last week. “We learned dedication. We learned we really wanted a job with air-conditioning.” They both became lawyers.
State Senator Woodson Bradley, a Democrat from the Charlotte area, calls Mr. Cooper and herself “country-politans” — people raised in rural counties who moved to cities but remember driving 15 miles to the grocery store and needing diesel for a tractor.
“It’s the most overlooked voter in North Carolina,” she said.
Mr. Cooper returned to Rocky Mount to energize campaign volunteers. They lined up after his remarks to take pictures with him.
The last person in line? His look-alike younger brother, Judge Pell C. Cooper of the Seventh Judicial District Court of North Carolina, who is also on the November ballot.
“Must be nice,” Roy Cooper ribbed his brother, “to run unopposed.”
Michael Kruse contributed reporting from Charlotte and Concord, N.C. Susan C. Beachy and Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
The post He Has Never Lost an Election. Can He Flip North Carolina’s Senate Seat? appeared first on New York Times.
