Cooper can bide his time

a 20-mile stretch of U.S 301 that cuts through the farm country between Rocky Mount and Wilson in Eastern North Carolina.

For the past 16 years, Tobacco Road has produced North Carolina's governors. Jim Hunt, the son of a Wilson County tobacco farmer, served as governor from 1993 to 2001. His successor, Mike Easley, the son of a Nash County tobacco warehouseman, is serving a second term that runs until 2009.

Even as the state morphs into a huge suburban megalopolis from Garner to Gastonia, North Carolinians still like their leaders to know that topping and suckering are not just things you do to political foes.

But Attorney General Roy Cooper's announcement this summer that he will seek re-election in 2008 rather than run for governor means Tobacco Road's lease on the Executive Mansion will not be renewed.

The son of a country lawyer from Nash County, Cooper spent his early years working his father's tobacco fields each summer. Cooper has been seen as the next rising star out of Tobacco Road since he was first elected to the state House in 1986 at age 29. He has Morehead Scholar brains, ambition, a prominent family, telegenic looks and a modest manner.

In many ways, Cooper has fulfilled the promise, having risen to majority leader of the state Senate before he ran for his current position. He is now in his second term as attorney general. But his supporters won't be satisfied until they see him become governor.

Cooper's friends say his decision to seek re-election was a personal one, not political. His youngest daughters are 11 and 13. It's hard to attend school plays when you are out most nights campaigning.

Cooper says he finds being attorney general invigorating: suing the Tennessee Valley Authority to force them to clean up their smokestacks, leading a national effort against child Internet predators, supporting laws against predatory lenders.

"You can make a real difference," Cooper said. "Bill Clinton once said the best job he ever had was being attorney general."

If the decision not to run for governor had been purely political, Cooper says, he would have waited until the end of the year.

But politics almost certainly played a role. Cooper would have had to beat two prominent Democrats, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and state Treasurer Richard Moore, to win his party's nomination. Both would have been formidable, well-financed foes -- and, in the case of Moore, a friend.

The conventional wisdom is that if Cooper and Moore -- who are sometimes mistaken for each other -- had remained in the race, Perdue would have waltzed to the nomination. Cooper's decision to seek re-election was good news for Moore.

Cooper, 49, has time to wait. He will be 59 after the next governor steps down, assuming he or she serves the maximum two four-year terms.

Cooper says he is not ruling out future runs for governor. Which is why Tobacco Road may one day reclaim the governor's office.