Roy Cooper has the will, anger on his side in governor’s race

Contests for governor are often jousts between ambitious politicians seeking to win more for their egos than for the people. The 2016 gubernatorial race will be different. This will be a clash between values and agendas with the candidates carrying the will – and on the Democratic side, the anger – of their constituencies.

This race won’t simply pit candidates against each other. It will be a referendum on ideas and ideals. In that context, many should cheer the long-awaited announcement by Democratic state Attorney General Roy Cooper that he is running for governor against Republican incumbent Pat McCrory.

Cooper’s candidacy will embody and advance Democratic dissent in the face of the Republicans’ near universal control of state government. The four-term attorney general, a native of Nash County and a son of Eastern North Carolina, the traditional base of the state’s Democrats, is well-positioned to make the case against the clumsy and destructive use Republicans have made of their chance to lead.

As one whose father was a farmer turned lawyer and his mother a school teacher, Cooper, 58, comes from the roots of what made North Carolina a progressive leader of the South – the transformative power of enlightened laws and a strong system of public education.

Since Republicans won control of the General Assembly in 2010 and then the governorship in 2012, Cooper has seen the power of the law turned on its head and the resources for education cut. Actions by the current legislature consistently reward the powerful and punish the weak while education and educators have been underfunded and devalued.

Obligated to defend the legislature’s misguided and in some cases illegal laws, Cooper has navigated his role carefully, advising the legislature against taking unconstitutional stands. He decided to drop a defense of the state’s constitutional ban on gay marriage in the face of federal rulings that such bans are clearly a violation of civil rights. And he has spoken openly about the legislature’s wrong course in squeezing funding for public schools even as they expand charter schools, including virtual charters, and give public money to private and unaccountable schools through vouchers.

In his announcement speech, Cooper called on North Carolina to return to its natural character as a state committed to learning and innovation rather than one fixated on undercutting the tax rate of its neighboring states regardless of the social costs.

Republicans will attempt to flip Cooper’s long record of experience as attorney general and a state lawmaker by claiming he is part of an old Democratic guard who represents a return to bloated and self-dealing government. Cooper will have to stress not only his record, but also his vision. If his North Carolina is a place of change and engagement with the future, he must be specific about what he will do that is new in an era of rapidly changing economics and demographics.

Meanwhile, the GOP’s casting Cooper as a return to the past is laughable. The Republicans have squandered their mandate for change by resorting to discredited trickle-down economics of the 1980s, pushing the state back toward substandard education and stirring old racial divisions through gerrymandering and voting rights restrictions. Instead of change, they’ve taken up the mantle of last century’s Dixiecrats.

Roy Cooper stands up for millions of North Carolinians who are fed up. He doesn’t have, nor like the Republican leadership does he pretend to have, all the answers. But he remembers where he and his state came from, and he will offer a chance for it to again go forward by caring for the needs and expanding the opportunities of all who call North Carolina home.

This story was originally published October 17, 2015 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Roy Cooper has the will, anger on his side in governor’s race."