Jeff Jackson might get the bug to run for Senate. He should swat it. | Opinion

The longer Roy Cooper takes to decide whether to run for U.S. Senate, the more it seems like the answer will be “no.”

Cooper is obviously national Democrats’ top choice to take on Sen. Thom Tillis. He’s undefeated in six statewide races and remains broadly popular in North Carolina. But after 38 straight years in public office, he’s starting to sound like a man coming to terms with the end of his political career.

That could make Attorney General Jeff Jackson the next man up. He just won statewide. He’s young, energetic and connects with the kind of grassroots voters national Democrats dream about. If Cooper passes, the pressure on Jackson to run will be intense.

So far, Jackson hasn’t indicated that he’s interested. He should keep it that way.

Cooper’s silence says a lot

Six months ago, Cooper felt like a near-lock to run. Tillis is widely viewed as one of the most vulnerable Republicans on the 2026 ballot. North Carolina is a rare pickup opportunity for Democrats in a brutal cycle.

But the longer Cooper stays quiet, the more it feels like a real retirement. When Josh Stein was sworn in as governor on Jan. 1, it marked the first time since the Reagan era that Cooper wasn’t holding elected office. He first took a seat in the state House in 1987 and hadn’t left Raleigh since.

He’s clearly enjoying the reset. After a short stint at Harvard, he became a fixture at Carolina Hurricanes games, even co-hosting a post-game podcast. At the unveiling of his portrait in the Executive Mansion last week, he didn’t sound like someone gearing up for a campaign. He sounded wistful — like a man closing a chapter.

It might sound strange, but the U.S. Senate doesn’t carry the prestige it once did. What was once a career capstone now feels like a grind. Governors used to aspire to the Senate. Now, many are steering clear.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have already passed on potential Senate bids. Meanwhile, three sitting senators — Tommy Tuberville, Marsha Blackburn and Michael Bennet — are eyeing their own statehouses instead. “It’s so partisan and so divided that it’s frustrating,” Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper, another former governor, told Punchbowl News. “It’s really hard to be a great senator.”

Cooper wielded unprecedented power as governor. Does he really want to go from that to taking orders from Sen. Chuck Schumer?

If not, Democrats need a new plan. Jackson would be an easy plug-and-play solution.

Jackson should pass

But a Senate campaign would validate every whisper that Jackson’s more focused on the next job than the one he just got. And it would raise a real question: Can someone campaign for Senate while serving as attorney general — and do either job well?

That’s the dilemma Robert Morgan faced in the 1970s. He was early in his second term as attorney general when Sen. Sam Ervin announced his retirement. Morgan wanted the seat — and after winning the Democratic primary, he voluntarily resigned so he could focus full-time on the campaign.

Rufus Edmisten was there for it. He’s older now, but he still knows a thing or two about political timing. A longtime aide to Ervin during the Watergate hearings, Edmisten would go on to succeed Morgan as attorney general.

When I asked him about that moment, he was blunt: “Morgan did that totally on his own. There has never been pressure on anybody in North Carolina to resign one office to run for another,” he told me. “But [Morgan] said, ‘I just feel like I ought to.’”

Of course, the dynamics were different then. Once Morgan won the primary, the general election was a formality. Jackson wouldn’t have that luxury. He’d be walking into a nationally targeted race with an incumbent who’s already proven he knows how to survive.

If Jackson resigns, runs and loses, he’s out of office entirely. If he stays in and tries to juggle both, he risks burning goodwill in Raleigh and Washington alike.

“While he’s a very attractive candidate, I would think being in his first few months of his first term, that he would want to get more established in that office,” Edmisten told me.

Later in our conversation, Edmisten called attorney general the best job he ever had. His favorite example? A woman who approached him decades later to thank him for getting her $600 in a class-action case over mislabeled Oldsmobile engines. “She said, ‘Mr. Edmisten, thank you for helping me get some money back,’” he said, grinning. “It must have been 40 years later she brought that up to me.”

That’s what the job can be, if you treat it seriously. And it’s a better path — and a more lasting one — than being this cycle’s second great Democratic hope.