Will he or won’t he? What experts think about Roy Cooper and a US Senate run | Opinion

Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has never lost a race, but he has also declined to run.

Cooper began his political career by winning election to the state House and then the state Senate. He went on to win six straight statewide elections – four as attorney general and the maximum two as governor.

That streak reflects his campaigning skills, but it also shows his ability to pick his spots. He resisted appeals that he run for governor in 2008 and 2012, said no to a 2010 Senate bid and withdrew from being considered for the vice-presidential spot on the 2024 Democratic ticket.

Now Cooper, 68, is once again weighing go or no. This time, for North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat.

Cooper and his inner circle are tight-lipped about his intentions, but the consensus in political circles is that he has decided to run. He may announce within the next few weeks.

State Sen. Dan Blue, a Wake County Democrat and former state House speaker and Senate minority leader, said Cooper has “got this sense of when the right timing is. That instinct has served him well over the years.”

As for his own instincts about whether Cooper will run for the Senate, Blue said, “My gut feeling is he’ll do it.”

One person who might be expected to read Cooper’s intentions closely isn’t doing so. Democrat Wiley Nickel, a former state senator and congressman, has announced he’s running for his party’s U.S. Senate nomination, although it’s likely he’ll drop out if Cooper gets in.

Whether that will happen, Nickel doesn’t know. “I certainly would like the answer to that, too. I haven’t talked to him or have any intel on that,” he said. “My focus is on turning this Senate seat from red to blue.”

There are reasons Cooper may not want to run. The Senate race, a must win for Democrats if they are to have any chance of regaining control of the Senate, is expected to be the most expensive in the nation. As the likely favorite, he would face a barrage of negative ads from Republicans and conservative groups who will comb through his long record.

Matt Mercer, spokesman for the state Republican Party, provided a sense of the likely GOP attacks if Cooper runs.

“Former Gov. Roy Cooper is vulnerable because his record hasn’t been through the scrutiny of a national campaign. From the disastrous inability to rebuild homes in eastern North Carolina to his failures during Hurricane Helene, he failed at the basic responsibility of governing,” Mercer said.

There’s also the discouraging history of Democrats and Senate races. The last Democrat to win was Kay Hagan in 2008. And there’s the haunting case of Jim Hunt, a four-time winner as governor who lost to Sen. Jesse Helms in 1984.

Rob Christensen, a former News & Observer political columnist and the author of books on North Carolina’s political history, said there is a long-running split between how the parties fare in gubernatorial and federal elections.

“North Carolina has elected more Democratic governors than any state in the country,” he said. “There’s an equally strong presumption that they will elect Republicans to the Senate.”

But those concerns fall away given the political climate and the political opportunity.

Cooper considers President Trump and the malleable, Republican-controlled U.S. Senate a threat to democracy and American principles. He is under pressure from national Democratic leaders to flip a North Carolina Senate seat so Democrats can block or at least stymie Trump’s agenda. That pressure has become more urgent since Republican Sen. Thom Tillis announced unexpectedly on June 29 that he will not seek reelection.

David McLennan, a Meredith College political scientist and director of the Meredith Poll, said Cooper would enter the Senate race with strong momentum. “Right now, Roy Cooper’s legacy is set,” he said. “He will go down in North Carolina history as one of the most popular governors, especially considering the current context of North Carolina being so polarized.”

With Tillis out, McLennan said, there is no Republican who would be on equal footing with Cooper, not even Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and a Wilmington native who served in 2024 as co-chair of the Republican National Committee. A Trump relative isn’t a major threat to Cooper, McLennan said, noting that the former governor outperformed Trump himself in 2016 and 2020.

With Trump trampling the Constitution and on the cusp of undoing Cooper’s signature achievement — Medicaid expansion — Cooper has a strong incentive to take a seat in the Senate.

Now the main questions are when will he announce and who will the Republicans put up to try to stop him.

This story was originally published July 12, 2025 at 4:30 AM with the headline "Will he or won’t he? What experts think about Roy Cooper and a US Senate run | Opinion."