Roy Cooper’s Senate campaign is trying to convince North Carolinians that he is conservative. His first ad begins with his father and mother — “a teacher” and “small-town lawyer and farmer” — then moves through images of church and high school football. The message echoes the “faith, family, and community” language he used as governor.
His launch event took place at a Raleigh brewery behind a podium sign that read “Make Stuff Cost Less,” with a Wilson County tobacco farmer speaking on his behalf. Cooper says he is running “to do something,” not “to be something.” Roll Call says he has “burnished an image as a mainstream Southern Democrat.” The Bulwark describes his style as a “‘folksy’ demeanor.” A Democrat strategist put it plainly: Cooper built “a North Carolina Democratic brand, and that brand is not a national Democratic brand.”
It’s a good strategy. But is any of it true?
We know who Cooper is as a politician. In 2023 he vetoed legislation that would have protected children from sex-denying medications and surgeries. When the ACLU sued over COVID-era prison conditions, his administration released thousands of inmates. Eighteen of them, according to a New York Post investigation, were later charged with murder. If he governed to the left in Raleigh, why would anyone believe he’ll govern to the center in Washington?
The Biden campaign had the same playbook when he ran for President in 2020 as the “folksy,” moderate alternative to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. But as we now know, President Biden was very different than candidate Biden.
The Biden administration ended Remain in Mexico, paused the border wall, and opened a parole pipeline that let in more than 530,000 migrants from four countries alone. During the Biden administration border apprehensions hit a record of nearly 370,000 in a single month. He raised the refugee admissions cap to 125,000 a year, the highest in nearly three decades.
Biden’s Education Department tried to rewrite Title IX to fold “gender identity” into federal sex-discrimination law, an effort courts thankfully blocked. His EEOC issued guidance mandating that men have access to women’s bathrooms and requiring that “preferred” pronouns be used in the workplace. This is the work of San Francisco, not Scranton.
If Roy Cooper is elected to the Senate and gives the Democrats a majority as a result, everyone should expect his voting record to be more Seattle than Rocky Mount regardless of what his ads say. Why? Because his party loyalties will demand it.
Consider the other Democrat U.S. Senate campaigns currently running. In Texas, Senate candidate James Talarico is running as a pastor but claims God is “nonbinary,” “both masculine and feminine, and everything in between.” And Jesus purportedly helps him “reckon with [his] own whiteness.” He once bragged about having a vegan campaign.
In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed runs as a technocratic public-health voice while on record backing Medicare for All, calling ICE “corrupted at its soul,” and describing Israel’s conduct in Gaza as “genocide.” In Maine, left-wing activists rallied around Graham Platner — a man with a tattoo that replicated Nazi iconography — until a sexual assault allegation forced him from the race. They’ve since regrouped around Troy Jackson, who twice led the Bernie Sanders for President campaign in Maine.
By all accounts, Roy Cooper is a genuinely nice man. There are a lot of people from San Francisco who hope that’s all the voters of North Carolina care about because they have plans — and they need Roy Cooper to make their plans reality.
