Roy Cooper
Roy Asberry Cooper III is an American politician and lawyer who was the 75th governor of North Carolina from 2017 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 50th attorney general of North Carolina from 2001 to 2017 and served in the North Carolina General Assembly from 1987 to 2001.
Born and raised in Eastern North Carolina, Cooper graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 1979. He began his career as a lawyer and in 1986 was elected to represent the 72nd district in the North Carolina House of Representatives. In 1991, he was appointed a member of the North Carolina Senate, a position he held until 2001. He was elected North Carolina Attorney General in 2000 and reelected in 2004, 2008, and 2012, serving for nearly 16 years, the longest tenure for an attorney general in the state's history.
Cooper defeated Republican incumbent Pat McCrory for the governorship in a close race in the 2016 election. This election made Cooper the first challenger to defeat a sitting governor in the state's history. Cooper was reelected in 2020 against the Republican nominee, Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest. The Republican-dominated legislature passed bills in a special session to reduce the power of the governor's office before he took office, but Cooper continued to emphasize increases in education and healthcare funding throughout his tenure, culminating in successful negotiations of statewide Medicaid expansion.
In July 2025, Cooper announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in the 2026 election.
Early life and education
Roy Asberry Cooper III was born in Nashville, North Carolina, on June 13, 1957, to Beverly Thorne , a teacher, and Roy Asberry Cooper II, a lawyer and Democratic Party operative who was a close advisor to Jim Hunt; he later co-chaired Hunt's successful 1976 gubernatorial campaign. He is a descendent of Marcom Cooper, who served as a grand juror and as a petit juror during the American Revolutionary War. Cooper is the brother of district court judge Pell Cooper. He attended public schools and worked on his parents' tobacco farm during summers. He attended Northern Nash High School, where he was an athlete, a participant in Boys State, and a member of student government. During his senior year, he was selected to represent Nash County in the Youth Legislative Assembly. He graduated in 1975.Cooper received the Morehead Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergraduate studies. As an undergraduate at UNC, he was a member of the Chi Psi fraternity and was elected president of the university's Young Democrats. He graduated with a B.A. in Political Science in 1979. He earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1982.
Early career
While Cooper was still in law school, then-Governor Jim Hunt appointed him to the State Goals and Policy Board, an advisory group that sought to achieve long- and short-range goals and policies for the state. He was the youngest person ever to serve on the board. Hunt also appointed Cooper to the Interim Balance Growth Board and the North Carolina 2000 Commission. He was also a member of the Rocky Mount Chamber of Commerce and UNC-Chapel Hill's Board of Visitors.In 1982, Cooper joined the law firm Fields, Cooper & Henderson in Nashville, North Carolina, the same firm his father had been a founding member of. Three years later, he was named a partner in the firm. In 1984, Cooper served as the Rocky Mount and Nash County chairman of Lauch Faircloth's unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign.
State legislature
On November 19, 1985, Cooper filed to run for the North Carolina House of Representatives in the 72nd district. He challenged 12-term incumbent Allen Barbee in the Democratic primary and ran on a campaign of supporting agriculture and resolving a school merger dispute in Nash County. Cooper won the primary with 76% of the vote to Barbee's 24%, including more than a six times gap in votes for Nash county, and he was unopposed in the general election.Cooper continued to practice law while serving in the legislature. The nonpartisan North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research ranked him the most effective freshman representative. In January 1989, he joined Republicans and 20 other dissident Democrats to unseat Speaker Liston B. Ramsey in favor of Josephus Mavretic, who appointed Cooper chair of the House Judiciary Committee, of which he had been a member during his first term. Cooper also voted with all House Republicans and 15 Democrats in favor of an unsuccessful attempt to amend the constitution to grant the governor veto power over legislation.
In February 1991, after State Senator Jim Ezzell was killed in a car crash, Cooper was appointed to the Senate to serve the remainder of Ezzell's term representing the 10th district, which encompassed parts of Edgecombe, Halifax, Nash, and Wilson Counties. In 1995, Cooper negotiated a compromise bill to schedule a referendum to amend the constitution and grant the governor veto power. In July 1997, he was elected Majority leader of the Senate upon Richard Conder's abrupt resignation. During his last term in the Senate, he was elected to the North Carolina Bar Association's Board of Governors, a position he held until June 2002.
Cooper's record in the legislature included implementing penalties for minors who bring guns to school, making public records more accessible, toughening the state's open meetings law, and giving the governor more veto power.
North Carolina Attorney General
Elections
In January 2000, Cooper filed with the state Board of Elections to launch a campaign for North Carolina attorney general. In the November general election, he defeated Republican lawyer Dan Boyce and Reform Party candidate Margaret Palms. He took office on January 6, 2001, and was reelected in 2004, defeating Republican Joseph Thomas Knott. He was easily reelected in 2008, defeating Republican Bob Crumley and garnering more votes than any other statewide candidate that year. Cooper ran unopposed for a fourth term in 2012, and received 2,828,941 votes.Both state and national Democrats attempted to recruit Cooper to run for governor in 2008, the U.S. Senate in 2010, and again for governor in 2012, but he declined each time. A 2009 Public Policy Polling survey matching him against incumbent U.S. Senator Richard Burr showed Cooper leading Burr by four points.
Tenure
In 2001, Cooper initiated legislation that established new mentoring and tutoring programs for middle and high school students out on short-term suspension. Governor Mike Easley signed the bill in June of that year.In 2002, a controversy arose after the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles was accused of covering up the speeding citation issued for Democratic U.S. House candidate James Ferguson during the 2000 campaign, and the North Carolina Republican Party called on Cooper to launch an investigation. Faced with potential fallout for investigating members of his own party, Cooper called on federal prosecutors to convene an investigative grand jury, arguing that they had powers to compel testimony not available to the state.
In January 2007, when Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong asked to be recused from dealing with the Duke lacrosse case, Cooper's office assumed responsibility for the case. On April 11, 2007, after revelations of Nifong's withholding of evidence, fabrications, and other ethics violations, Cooper dismissed the case against the Duke lacrosse team players, taking the extraordinary step of declaring them "innocent" and victims of a "tragic rush to accuse". The decision won him bipartisan praise.
Days after the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, Cooper created the Campus Safety Task Force to analyze school shootings and make policy recommendations to help the government prevent and respond to them. The task force delivered its report in January 2008. After the release of its findings, Cooper assisted members of the North Carolina General Assembly in passing a law that required court clerks to record involuntary commitments in a national gun permit database.
After a 2010 decision by a three-judge panel to exonerate Gregory Taylor, who had served nearly 17 years for the first-degree murder of Jaquetta Thomas, Cooper ordered an audit after it was learned that officials at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation forensic lab had withheld information. This suppression of evidence had contributed to Taylor's conviction for murder. The audit was released in 2010; it found that it had been common practice for two decades for a select group of agents at the State Bureau of Investigation to withhold information. In addition, they did not keep up with scientific standards and the latest tests. The two investigators, Chris Swecker and Micheal Fox, cited almost 230 cases tainted by these actions. Three people convicted in such cases had been executed; 80 convicts were still in prison. A massive state effort was undertaken to follow up on their cases.
In 2011 Cooper argued his first case before the United States Supreme Court, J. D. B. v. North Carolina, a case related to Miranda rights in juvenile cases. The Court ruled 5–4 against North Carolina.
In 2014, after a major coal ash spill in the Dan River, then-Governor Pat McCrory accused Cooper of politicizing the incident after Cooper criticized Duke Energy, the company responsible for the spill. McCrory later accused Cooper of "fighting against" efforts to clean up the spill, a claim WRAL-TV called "nonexistent".
Governor of North Carolina
Elections
2016
Cooper ran for governor of North Carolina in the 2016 election against incumbent Republican Pat McCrory. In March 2016, the North Carolina General Assembly passed the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act—commonly known as "House Bill 2"—which McCrory signed into law. Numerous corporations began boycotting the state in protest of the law, cancelling job investment and expansion plans. Cooper denounced the law as unconstitutional and refused to defend it in court in his capacity as attorney general.As a result of the economic damage the law caused, McCrory's approval rating fell dramatically in the months before the election. When initial election results showed Cooper leading, McCrory claimed without evidence that the election had been manipulated by voter fraud. Recounts resulted in slightly higher margins of victory for Cooper, and after an extended legal battle, McCrory conceded the election on December 5. Out of 4.7 million total ballots, Cooper won by 10,227 votes.