Former Gov. Roy Cooper makes NC Senate bid official, setting up competitive race
Former N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper has “had enough.”
In a video, first released exclusively to McClatchy, Cooper officially kicked off his 2026 Senate campaign Monday.
In the video, he looks directly into a camera and shares that he never intended to go to Washington. He wanted to serve North Carolinians from within the state. But he can’t remember the “country facing a moment as fragile as this.”
He said it is wrong that lawmakers in Washington are raising the national debt, disrespecting veterans and putting Medicaid and Social Security on the line.
“I’ve thought about it and prayed about it and decided I want to serve as your next United States senator because even now I still believe our best days our ahead of us,” Cooper said in the more than 2-minute video, which his campaign is expected to publicly release later Monday.
The announcement sets up a race that already has drawn national attention and is expected to break spending records as Republicans seek to maintain their majority in the Senate.
The seat opened up after Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from Huntersville, ended his reelection campaign last month amid a disagreement with President Donald Trump and fellow Senate Republicans over cuts to Medicaid.
Democrats have long seen Cooper, 68, as the person in the best position to take back one of North Carolina’s two seats in the Senate from Republicans. Cooper’s announcement seems to have pushed out the only other Democrat running so far.
Three Republicans already have announced their plans to run for the open Senate seat, and Trump has endorsed a fourth, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley, who is expected to formally announce his candidacy soon.
Those closest to Cooper knew an announcement was coming. He had been gathering their opinions for months, and the excitement was palpable from friends he’s known for decades, who agreed to speak to McClatchy ahead of the announcement.
“It’s probably the most anticipated thing since, I don’t know,” Kristi Jones, Cooper’s former chief of staff, said in an interview Saturday. “The story has broken 100 times before it was real.”
Their excitement wasn’t just for their friend’s political journey, but a belief that he is the answer to a desperate cry for change in Washington.
“We need him,” Nina Szlosberg, a family friend and colleague, said Saturday. “We need him in North Carolina to represent us. We need him in the United States to help our country, at a very difficult time and the world needs him, because the world needs America to be the best we can be.”
The race takes shape
Democrats are rallying around Cooper’s campaign. At a Democratic Party fundraiser in Raleigh Saturday night, speakers already were calling him “Senator Cooper,” The N&O reported.
Cooper, a Nashville native who lives in Raleigh, has been recruited multiple times for the U.S. Senate, but never ran. A 2009 poll showed Cooper, then the state’s attorney general, beating then-Sen. Richard Burr 41% to 37% in a hypothetical matchup.
“He never thought…about going to Washington,” Jones said. “That wasn’t who he was or what he ever dreamed about. But what you have to do is, if you love people, and you love a group of people, and you realize there’s a way you can help them, even if you have to do something you hadn’t thought about that helps them, you have to do that.”
Former U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield has known Cooper, his parents and his brother for more than 40 years. They both grew up in Eastern North Carolina, and Cooper’s family worked in and around the same courthouses as Butterfield.
“It won’t be given to him on a silver platter,” Butterfield said. “He’s going to work for it, but Roy has a nationwide network of governors, former governors and donors who I believe will very quickly embrace his campaign.”
Cooper has led the Democratic Governors Association and was a champion of the Biden-Harris administration. He later was a surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and was considered a possible candidate as her running mate before he declined the role.
Rumors began circulating last week that Cooper was preparing to announce his intentions. Less than a day later, advisers for Whatley, of Gastonia, reported he will launch his own campaign.
Whatley will face off against Andy Nilsson, a retired businessman; Don Brown, a former JAG officer; and Brooks Agnew, an author and engineer; in the Republican primary. But Whatley, who has yet to make his campaign official, already earned Trump’s “complete and total endorsement.”
Meanwhile, former Rep. Wiley Nickel, a Democrat from Cary, launched his Senate campaign in 2023, but sources tell McClatchy that Nickel plans to withdraw from the race, a story first broken by Semafor. Nickel has not yet announced that decision as of Monday.
Midterm challenge
Midterm elections are historically difficult for the party of the president. This could open the door for a Democratic win, with the right candidate, said Chris Cooper, a political science professor from Western Carolina University.
Butterfield says he believes the key to the 2026 election will be the unaffiliated voter and turnout. North Carolina’s unaffiliated voters currently dominate the state’s voter registration rolls, The N&O previously reported.
Butterfield noted that Trump is no longer polling well in North Carolina and the impact that could have on the ballot. He believes there could be a 2-3% loss in Republican turnout.
He also believes Trump will drive Democratic and unaffiliated voters to the voting booths, “because North Carolina wants change.” And that change, Butterfield said, means electing lawmakers who want to govern and pass legislation instead of currying favor with special interest groups.
“The Trump administration has taken the country in the wrong direction and voters know that, and that’s why I believe that in the midterm elections, voters are going to speak very loudly,” Butterfield said.
“The Senate is a little different,” he added.
What is Roy Cooper’s previous experience?
Cooper, an attorney, has a lengthy career in North Carolina politics. He served in the state House and Senate and was named Senate majority leader. In his first term in office, in 1987, the North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research named Cooper the most effective of 22 freshmen that year.
He served two terms in the House, then was appointed in February 1991 to fill the Senate seat of Jim Ezzell, who died in a car wreck. Cooper served 10 years in the Senate and one term as majority leader before deciding to run for attorney general, a position he stayed in until his election as governor in 2016.
Cooper served two terms as governor. By law, Cooper wasn’t allowed to run for a third term, and he left the governor’s mansion in January.
As governor, he led the state through the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020.
During that time, he addressed North Carolina regularly, sometimes on a daily basis, in press conferences about how people should protect themselves, and how he would protect them from the virus. Some of his decisions have been met with scrutiny from Republicans, like closing churches, restaurants and sporting events.
On Friday, after Cooper’s team confirmed he was set to announce whether he would run for Senate, the National Republican Senatorial Committee put out a statement with further criticisms of the governor.
“Roy Cooper has been a tireless advocate for progressive causes like forcing women to compete against males in sports, raising taxes on North Carolinian families, and releasing illegal aliens onto North Carolina streets,” NRSC Regional Press Secretary Nick Puglia said. “Cooper is so committed to the Democrat cause that he is willing to embrace the radical left and join the long list of Democrat governors who lost their bids for the U.S. Senate.”
Jones, Cooper’s former chief of staff, said Cooper wanted to hear every side about what he was considering, and he was just as analytical about policy decisions as he was about running for office. He encouraged his employees to tell him he was wrong, Jones said.
Behind the scenes, Jones remembers Cooper as the boss that would show up to his employees’ children’s sporting events or parents’ funerals, despite his schedule. That’s something that stood out to Slozsberg as well, when her husband, Kel Landis, died.
Jones said his work was never about his legacy. She cited the following accomplishments during Cooper’s tenure as governor:
- Expanding Medicaid;
- Environmental work;
- North Carolina being named the number one state to do business with;
- Creating good paying jobs;
- Fighting for public education;
- Achieving pay raises for teachers and principals.
Cooper’s gubernatorial career concluded with the erasure of an estimated $4 billion in medical debt for 2 million low- or middle-class families and his work on Hurricane Helene recovery.
“In his mind, it’s his job to do good, so when you do good, you just move on to doing more good,” Jones said.
Cooper’s campaign video addressed his concerns about the middle class.
“It wasn’t always this hard, because being in the middle class meant something,” Cooper said. “You could afford a home. Your kids went to good schools. Your job paid enough to cover the basics. And most summers you could get away for a few days. For the most part life was pretty good.”
Cooper said he knows that isn’t the case anymore.
“I know that today, for too many Americans, the middle class feels like a distant dream,” Cooper said. “Meanwhile, the biggest corporations and the richest Americans have grabbed unimaginable wealth at your expense. It’s time to change that.”
Medicaid expansion in North Carolina
Republicans have criticized Cooper of being too extreme to the left, and his failure to work across the aisle, but none of those interviewed agreed with that statement, and all of them point to Medicaid expansion.
For years, North Carolina Republican leadership fought back against Cooper in his fight to expand Medicaid.
Butterfield called Republicans’ pushback “tremendous.”
“He was relentless in his determination to expand Medicaid in North Carolina and he worked with Speaker (Tim) Moore at the time,” Butterfield said.
Moore, a Republican from Kings Mountain, is now serving his first term in the U.S. House.
Szlosberg, Cooper’s friend and colleague, remembered him working with Senate Leader Phil Berger, a Republican from Eden, as well, to pass Medicaid.
“He worked for years and years on that issue and worked in front of the cameras and behind closed doors,” Szlosberg said. “He worked with Berger and all the Republican leadership, and they got that done and as a result, 600,000 people have health insurance in North Carolina that wouldn’t have it otherwise. That’s just huge.”
Jones said stripping Medicaid away from 11.8 million people “for no reason” is another reason Cooper decided to run, adding that he takes that “very personal.” The federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law July 4, risks the health care coverage in North Carolina of nearly the identical number of people Cooper ensured received it before he left office.
Cooper serves as Kamala Harris surrogate
In 2024, he campaigned for other Democrats. After declining to be considered as Harris’ running mate, he stumped for the Democratic presidential races and introduced Harris, the party’s nominee, on the last day of the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
November was the first time his name hasn’t appeared on a North Carolina ballot since 1987.
After leaving office on Jan. 1, Cooper chose to step away from the spotlight, but vowed to return to public service in some form.
Cooper spent eight weeks at Harvard University as a fellow at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health teaching about the intersection of government and public health.
Sen. Thom Tillis leaves Senate race
Tillis initially set the stage to run against Cooper when announcing his reelection campaign in December 2024.
Tillis has served in the U.S. Senate since 2015. But he’s often found himself at odds with his party because he’s willing to work across the aisle to get major pieces of legislation passed. That includes expanding gun safety regulations and codifying into law the right for interracial and same-sex couples to marry. He’s been censured by his party with Whatley at the helm.
The start of Trump’s second term put Tillis in a difficult position that led to the demise of his reelection campaign.
Tillis often backed the president, but he opposed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which aimed to fulfill Trump’s campaign promises. Citing the effect the bill would have on North Carolina’s Medicaid program, Tillis said he couldn’t support it, and Republicans wouldn’t budge on adjusting it.
It was the first major piece of policy Tillis had to vote on after announcing his candidacy, and he said if he moved forward with his campaign he couldn’t call “balls and strikes” the way he needed to for the people of North Carolina.
He told Trump to find a new candidate.
Who is RNC chair Michael Whatley?
Whatley, a North Carolina native, led the North Carolina Republican Party before Trump picked him to lead the national party. He helped lead Trump to his 2020 victory in North Carolina, and was poised to work toward maintaining control of the two chambers during the midterms.
Now, he’s likely entering the midterms as a first-time candidate, with Trump’s blessing and endorsement.
Cooper’s friends are taking a Cooper vs. Whatley race in stride.
“I thought it was a strange choice,” Szlosberg said. “He’s not a person who’s got any real governing experience to speak of. He’s kind of a political guy. Maybe they feel like he can access all the Republican political networks in the state and in the country to raise money. That’s the only thing I can think of why he would be the choice for that.”
This story was originally published July 28, 2025 at 8:00 AM.