He’s never lost an election. He’s known Kamala Harris for years. And he’s a self-professed “diet soda sommelier” with a distaste for Diet Mountain Dew — the beverage Sen. JD Vance went viral for promoting in his first speech as Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate.
“I just think that Cooper is a complete package,” said state Senate Democratic Leader Dan Blue, who was also North Carolina’s first and only Black House speaker. “I don’t see any vulnerabilities — unless being a Southerner and talking a little slower might be a vulnerability in certain parts of the country.”
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is not an astronaut or household name like some others the vice president is considering for her running mate. But many Democrats think Cooper is at or near the top of Harris’ short list because he’d be a strong partner who could potentially deliver North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes.
“He’s kind of the ultimate team player,” said state Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, the Democratic whip and a former Cooper aide. “James Carville once famously said that there are politicians who want to be something and politicians who want to do something. Roy Cooper has been someone who wants to do something for the people.”
The governor’s second term is up at the end of this year and term limits prevent him from running again, so Democrats would not risk losing anything by taking him out of state. And he’s not known to harbor presidential ambitions for himself, so he would be unlikely to try to overshadow Harris or use the job as a stepping stone.
“He does a lot of winning,” said Noam Lee, who was executive director of the Democratic Governors Association when Cooper chaired it.
“Mr. November,” as Lee said Cooper was dubbed internally, raised a “truly mind-boggling amount of money” to help the party’s gubernatorial slate outperform expectations in 2022.
Allies describe Cooper, 67, as a disciplined political tactician and competent executive who has spent years quietly chipping away at opposition in the Republican-dominated statehouse to pass progressive legislation on LGBTQ rights, Medicaid expansion and climate change.
In North Carolina, Cooper has consistently outperformed national Democrats, winning six statewide elections in a row — including five when Republican presidential candidates also carried the state. He won his first term as governor by ousting the Republican incumbent in 2016, even as Trump sailed to victory on the same night.
“Roy Cooper is the most popular politician in North Carolina,” said Gary Pearce, a Raleigh-based Democratic strategist. “North Carolina has always been more of a state that, if Democrats can win it, then there’s no road to the White House for Trump.”
After decades in the state Legislature, four terms as attorney general and two as governor, allies say Cooper knows it better than anyone, cultivating a vast bipartisan political network through old-fashioned Joe Biden-style relationship building, with a particular fondness for handwritten notes.
Still, it would be an uphill battle for any Harris-led ticket to carry North Carolina.
Vice presidential candidates have a mixed record of delivering their home states, since voters tend to focus on the top of the ticket. And like in many states, North Carolina voters have a record of being willing to split their ticket in state races, but not federal ones, making it unclear if Cooper’s coattails would even work in a presidential race.
Even so, Cooper boosters say the gray-haired Southerner would be an ideal complement to Harris, whom Republicans are eager to paint as a San Francisco extremist.
Sunday school teacher
Born in rural Nash County, about 45 miles east of Raleigh, Cooper — who says it’s actually pronounced more like “cooker” — attended public schools and picked tobacco on his parents’ farm during the summers. He won a prestigious Morehead Scholarship to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he pledged the Chi Psi fraternity and was elected president of the campus Young Democrats. He stayed at UNC for law school.
An observant Presbyterian, Cooper has served as a deacon and Sunday school teacher at his Raleigh church. His wife, Kristin, is an attorney and avid birder who has worked in the foster care system and used her first ladyship to focus on child poverty and related issues. They have three young-adult daughters, all of whom also graduated from Chapel Hill.
Former aides describe Cooper as a warm boss who treated staff like family and modeled work-life balance, which helped engender strong loyalty. They’re proud to note that two former Cooper cabinet officials were recently elevated to top jobs in Washington, including Environmental Protection Agency Director Michael S. Regan and Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen.
The image of the squeaky-clean family man is real, allies say, but also one that has been hard to penetrate since Cooper rarely shows much spontaneity or personality in public.
“He’s a very disciplined messenger,” said Travis Fain, a veteran North Carolina political reporter who recently left journalism for nonpartisan PR. “There are plenty of people I’ve interviewed over the years where I thought I was in control — Cooper was not one of them. I tried as many ways as I could think of to get him off his talking points, but it just became clear that I was only going to get what he wanted to give.”
That reputation for image control is what made Fain and other North Carolina politicos take notice when, in a hot-mic moment as he was preparing an interview, Cooper responded to a question about his beloved Diet Sun Drop soda with a rare moment of levity.
“I’m like a diet soda sommelier,” Cooper said as he was mic’d up for an interview in 2022. “So, Mountain Dew is sweeter than Diet Sun Drop. Diet Sun Drop has a little bit more of a tart taste.”
It’s not much. Especially in an age of politicians sharing so much on social media. But Cooper ended up putting “diet soda sommelier” in his social media bio and the North Carolina Democratic Party sold “diet soda sommelier” koozies.
“He’s got a human side,” said Fain. “And he would have to show a little more of that [as Harris’ running mate] because you have to break through at the national level.”
It’s ironic, then, that his potential rival, Vance, used his first speech as Trump’s running mate to share his own opinions on diet citrus soda, joking that Democrats were going to start calling his beloved Diet Mountain Dew “racist” now.
‘I’ve known her a long time’
Unlike some others on Harris’ short list, she and Cooper have something of a pre-existing relationship, though they are not close.
As attorneys general, they worked together on the national mortgage settlement after the 2008 financial crisis. When Harris got to the Senate and served on the Judiciary Committee, she would call up Cooper to suss out nominees from his state. And Cooper has appeared with Harris every time she’s visited the state, “unlike some who go running when the time get tough,” noted Blue, the Senate Democratic leader.
“I’ve known her a long time,” Cooper said of Harris on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this week. “She came to Charlotte on the Dobbs anniversary and gave a passionate speech to a packed rally regarding women’s reproductive freedom. You could tell the excitement in the room.”
Matt Bennett, the executive vice president of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, who has worked on several presidential campaigns, said personal “chemistry” may be the most important factor in Harris’ choice.
“I don’t know that Harris has a real hole to fill, so instead, if I were Harris, I would look for the person that I feel more comfortable with,” Bennett said.
Vulnerabilities
While Cooper is seen as unlikely to have any skeletons in his closet, Republicans would likely revive criticism of his handling of a 2018 hurricane, a pipeline fund and the coronavirus pandemic.
Democrats, however, are more likely to raise concerns about his lieutenant governor, Republican Mark Robinson, who under state law becomes acting governor whenever the governor is out of the state. (North Carolina elects the two positions separately, not as a ticket.)
Robinson, who is running for governor himself this year, is a deeply controversial figure whom Democrats view as a Holocaust-denying far-right ideologue. So some worry that Robinson could take advantage of Cooper’s absence on the campaign trail.
But Gerry Cohen, a North Carolina election law expert who spent 40 years working for the nonpartisan staff of the state Legislature, said there’s little Robinson could do that could not be immediately undone when Cooper returned to the state.
“We’ve had governors and lieutenant governors of different parties not infrequently. … I don’t know of any problem occurring,” he said. “The Republicans have a supermajority so Cooper’s veto could be overridden anyway, so I’m not sure what the real difference would be.”
