Cooper’s Announcement Video Reveals The Challenge Ahead For Him
Yesterday, former Governor Roy Cooper (D) launched his Senate campaign after months of recruitment efforts by national Democrats. Coope utilized the low-risk strategy of releasing a pre-release video, followed up by interviews with legacy media outlets, including the Rachel Maddow show. But the video’s contradictory themes of working with Republicans and his promise to fight the Trump admin, reveal the challenging campaign ahead for Cooper.
In his announcement video, Cooper recounts his time as Governor, where he worked to balance the budget, worked with Republicans to raise teacher pay, and created thousands of better-paying jobs. This picture, to put it mildly, is utter nonsense.
North Carolina is required by law to pass a balanced budget it. It seems weird to brag about doing the bare minimum. Additionally, Cooper’s time as governor was marked by constant conflict with Republicans in the General Assembly. He vetoed over 100 bills, far more than any previous North Carolina governor.
Even worse, Cooper fundamentally disagreed with Republicans over the key policies that he is now taking credit for. Republicans in the General Assembly passed budgets over Cooper’s objection that raised teacher pay, expanded school choice, and created the climate that made North Carolina the top state for business. No wonder, Senate Leader Phil Berger quickly called out Cooper for trying to “rewrite” history
The reason Cooper now feels the need to masquerade as a bipartisan leader is that North Carolina’s electorate is growing more Republican with an even larger share of unaffiliates. According to the John Locke Foundation’s Carolina Election project, since 2008, Democrats have lost over 200,000 voters, while Republicans gained over 373,000 and Unaffiliates grew by 1.7 million. Democrats have not won a Senate race in North Carolina since 2008, part of the reason for that is there are simply fewer Democratic voters.
Democrats’ approval rating has fallen to a 35-year low, and clearly, Cooper’s team feels the need to distance themselves from the national Democrats who recruited Cooper to run. Recent focus group data shows that liberals want Democrats to fight Trump and Republicans, not work toward bipartisan solutions. The clearest example of this is North Carolina Democrats most recent decision to pass an anti-Israel resolution. This move is certainly popular with progressives, it is simply toxic with swing voters. Which is why Cooper and other elected Democrat leaders continue to avoid taking a stance on this critical issue.
Cooper has a tightrope to walk if he wants to win the race for U.S. Senate. If he champions bipartisan solutions to appeal to persuadable voters, he will alienate his base. If he appeases the base by unmasking his woke agenda, he will lose persuadable voters.
Cooper has never run for federal office before and will need to take broad positions on issues like immigration, taxes, and foreign policy among many other issues handled on the federal level. Every day on the campaign trail, Cooper will decide if he wants to pretend to stand with North Carolinians or reveal his out-of-touch woke agenda. Over time, as Cooper continues to show his true colors the race will tilt toward the Republicans.
