Democrats eager for Cooper Senate bid in North Carolina
Democrats are eager to see former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) jump into the Tar Heel State's Senate race next year, seeing him as the most formidable challenger to Sen. Thom Tillis (R).
Cooper said at the conclusion of his second term as governor that he would look at running for Senate as one of several options ahead of him, and speculation of him getting into the race has only risen since then, with the head of Senate Democrats' campaign arm reportedly praising him to donors.
A popular two-term governor of the purple state, Cooper would bring name ID to a race in a state where Democrats haven't held a Senate seat in a decade and that President Trump won by 3 points in 2024.
'If Roy Cooper decides to run, it would really make the race one of the most competitive races in the country next year, could be the most of any Senate race in the country,' said Democratic strategist Doug Wilson.
Tillis won reelection in 2020 with a less than 2-point edge in what was the most expensive Senate race in the country that year. Higher up on the ballot, Trump narrowly beat former President Biden in the battleground.
This cycle, Tillis is on track to be one of the most vulnerable Senate incumbents, facing potentially tough competition from both sides of the aisle. He was among several Republican incumbents who faced pressure from the right over Trump's controversial Cabinet nominees — and, now that he's voted to confirm them, Democrats see a more promising pickup opportunity.
A March report from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling found Tillis with a dismal approval rating of 25 percent, compared to a 48 percent approval rating for Trump. And the Republican was trailing Cooper in a hypothetical Senate match-up, 47 percent to 43 percent.
A December poll from the Florida-based firm Victory Insights found Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law, would 'likely crush' Tillis in a GOP primary, though she hasn't expressed formal interest in the role. In a head-to-head with Cooper, Tillis trailed by 1 point.
The map of Senate seats up for grabs in 2026 also will send more eyes to Tillis. Democrats have relatively few serious pickup opportunities next year, making the North Carolina race, along with the one in Maine for Sen. Susan Collins's (R) seat, key to Democratic hopes of cutting into the 53-seat Republican Senate majority.
The Cook Political Report rates the race as 'lean Republican' but notes Cooper is 'Democrats' dream candidate to challenge Sen. Thom Tillis, and were he to run, Tillis would immediately become the most endangered GOP incumbent of the cycle.'
Democrats acknowledged the difficulty Cooper could face in the race. Wilson noted voters in the state recently have tended to vote Republican for federal offices and Democratic for state-level offices.
The Tar Heel State has gone red in every presidential race since 2012, and both its Senate seats have been held by the GOP since Tillis won his first term in 2014.
But Cooper narrowly ousted then-incumbent Gov. Pat McCrory (R) in a tight 2016 race that took a month to call and has become a bright spot for Democrats in the battleground. He bested his Trump-endorsed Republican challenger in 2020 by more than 4 points and, in a sign of his potency in the party, he was floated in the veepstakes to join former Vice President Kamala Harris on the 2024 White House ticket.
He withdrew himself from consideration, though, contending it was 'just not the right time for me or my state.' Now that he's left office, Cooper is set to start an eight-week teaching job at the Harvard School of Public Health in late March.
Wilson pointed to former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan's (R) unsuccessful run for Senate against Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D) last year despite being a widely popular governor in a blue state. But North Carolina is a much more competitive state.
'If anybody could do it, I think [Cooper] would have a good shot,' he said.
Aimy Steele, a former Democratic North Carolina state House candidate who runs the New North Carolina Project, which works to drive Black and brown voter turnout, said she would expect boosted turnout from minority voters based on Cooper's record as governor.
'He's someone that everyone can see themselves supporting not only Black and brown people, but also white people, people who are just a diverse background, regardless of their race,' she said.
Cooper performed particularly well with Black voters in his 2020 reelection campaign, winning 92 percent of their votes, according to a CNN exit poll.
Cynthia Wallace, who leads a nonprofit working to boost rural turnout called the New Rural Project, noted that Cooper is originally from a rural area and demonstrated an 'authentic' connection to rural voters despite Democrats' base of support typically being in cities.
'I don't hear a lot of negative commentary about him out in the countryside,' she said.
North Carolina Republican strategist Jim Blaine took issue with the recent PPP polling showing Cooper ahead of the incumbent, pointing out past criticism of the pollster.
'Tillis' numbers aren't great but, considering the source, are far from fatal,' Blaine said on the social platform X.
The race 'would be tied if Tillis had the level of support with the GOP that Cooper is getting from Dems,' he added, arguing the Republican could get there with another endorsement from Trump, who backed Tillis in the 2020 cycle.
If Cooper doesn't run, Democrats could have another option in former Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-N.C.), who won his House seat in a tight 2022 race.
But after new congressional maps threatened a handful of the state's House Democrats, Nickel decided against seeking reelection and floated a future Senate run.
2024 Election Coverage
Sabato's Crystal Ball said in an analysis last month that Nickel 'would seem to have a head start' in 'a Cooper-less Democratic primary.' The election handicapper rated the race as one of just three 2026 Senate toss-ups.
But if the former governor does get in, he likely 'clears the field,' said Jason Roberts, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And while Cooper isn't necessarily Democrats' only chance of a flip, Roberts added, he could be their best.
'He's a very formidable candidate if he decides to run. It seems like he's going to run, and I think that sets up a blockbuster race.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Dozens of environmental groups sign letter opposing return of Utah public lands sale
People rally in opposition of Utah's lawsuit attempting to take control of federal lands at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch) Organizations from around the country signed a letter on Monday urging U.S. senators not to include a controversial proposal to sell thousands of acres of federal land in Congress' budget bill. The letter comes in the wake of reports that Utah Sen. Mike Lee is considering reviving an amendment to the bill originally proposed by Rep. Celeste Maloy that would dispose of nearly 11,500 acres of Bureau of Land Management land in southwestern Utah, and about 450,000 acres in Nevada. Lee, when asked by a Politico reporter last week if he intended to reintroduce the disposal, responded, 'I gotta go vote, but yes.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Lee's office did not respond to a request for comment on Monday, and it's unclear whether Utah's senior GOP senator is considering bringing back an exact copy of Maloy's amendment, or something different. But more than 100 organizations and nonprofits around the country are sounding the alarm, telling Senate leaders to 'heed how dramatically unpopular this idea is and reject any misguided attempt to get public lands sales back in this bill.' 'Decisions about the future of public lands should remain in public hands. Leaders in the House and Senate, extractive industry, and private developers are using the reconciliation process to sell off federal lands to pay for billionaire tax cuts. But such moves are deeply unpopular. Polling has repeatedly shown that the public — especially westerners — strongly believes in keeping public lands in public hands and, across partisan lines, rejects any efforts that would lead to the sale of these shared and cherished lands,' reads the letter, signed by Utah groups like the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Conserve Southwest Utah, Save Our Canyons, Great Basin Water Network and Back Country Horsemen of Utah. Public lands sale may return to 'big, beautiful' bill with Mike Lee amendment The letter is addressed to Lee, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, New Mexico Democrat Martin Heinrich, the committee's ranking member, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat. Maloy's amendment was dropped from the budget bill after it received pushback from all sides of the aisle. That includes Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, who previously said selling public lands is a line he would not cross and rallied support from a bipartisan group of lawmakers to strip the proposal from the bill. 'The public had no opportunity to participate in the process of identifying these parcels, let alone time to understand the long-term effect of selling off these public lands,' the letter reads. Maloy's proposal identified parcels owned by the Bureau of Land Management to sell to Washington and Beaver counties, the Washington County Water Conservancy District and the city of St. George. The land would have been used for water infrastructure (like reservoirs and wells), an airport expansion in St. George, new and widened roads, recreation and housing. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
S.C. senator attempt to stop state lawmaker pay increase
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WSPA) – A legal battle is underway over state lawmakers giving themselves more money. One senator said the way it was done is unconstitutional, but the lawmaker who pushed for the increase the state's new budget, lawmakers voted to more than double their in-district compensation, increasing it from around $1,000 a month to $2,500 a month. The move was led by Republican Senator Matt Leber (R – Charleston), who said it's not a pay raise but a reimbursement to help public servants cover travel and district costs. Leber sponsored a bill that had the same language and said he will try to pass the bill in January. He said lawmakers have not gotten a raise in in-district expense since 1994, and they need to adjust for inflation. Therefore, he said it's not a salary raise. 'If we don't make this at least affordable for the everyday person to run for office, then we're not going to get the everyday person to run for office,' Leber said. 'It's just going to be elites up there running everything, and they love this argument. ' Not everyone agrees on the decision. '$1,000 a month arrives in legislators bank accounts via direct deposit. There are no receipts required to submit for reimbursement. It's just $1,000 deposit into the account. Legislators are free to expend those funds however they deem appropriate,' said Senator Wes Climer (R – York). The increase was passed as an amendment to the budget and Climer said it wasn't the right way to do it. 'Regardless of how you feel about a legislative pay raise, this is the wrong way to do it. Violate the principle that the legislature cannot take the people's money and appropriate it to themselves in real time,' Climer added.'The proviso method is there for us to use more difficult for the current crop of legislators to continue to work. I felt like it was right to go for it now. ' Climer is now suing the State Treasurer's Office, and said the South Carolina Constitution bans lawmakers from increasing their own compensation before an election. He and retired Senator, Dick Harpootlian, have asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to step in, arguing the vote violates the state constitution. 'We are standing here and have filed the suit in order to protect or to defend the constitutional safeguards against the general assembly,' Climer added. Governor Henry McMaster chimed in on the issue last week. 'They are the ones that are trying to pay those expenses. In good faith, if they use that money for the in-district expenses as they're supposed to, then if that amount is legitimate, then that's a proper law,' McMaster said. The South Carolina Supreme Court has issued a scheduling order requiring the state to respond to the injunction request by next Monday. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Perfect storm as Trump's mass deportation drive collides with city of immigrants
This weekend, tensions boiled over in the Los Angeles area after a week of immigration sweeps in the region sparked violent protests against the Trump administration and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. President Donald Trump's decision to send 700 US Marines and 2,000 National Guard troops to the Los Angeles area to support the federal response to the unrest has opened a volatile chapter in his mass deportation campaign. The location of the raids and subsequent protests – a liberal-leaning city in a state controlled by Democrats – also gave the White House an ideal public foil as it seeks to show progress on removing illegal immigrants and instilling law and order. Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and prominent critic of the president, wrote on X that the troop deployment was a "deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President". The raids in America's second-biggest city are unfolding against the backdrop of an aggressive push to raise arrest and deportation numbers, as the administration has been disappointed with its current pace. ICE has ramped up its enforcement actions in recent weeks as it faces pressure to show progress on Trump's signature policy initiative. The agency arrested 2,200 people on 4 June, according to NBC News, a record for a single day. The network reported that hundreds of those arrested were enrolled in a programme known as Alternative to Detention, which allows for the release and monitoring of individuals not deemed an immediate threat. Live updates from LA protests LA's unrest in maps and pictures White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the man widely seen as the intellectual architect of the deportation policy, has repeatedly said the White House hopes that ICE can scale up to 3,000 arrests a day, up from 660 or so during the first 100 days of Trump's presidency. "President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day," Miller told Fox News in late May. Yet for much of the first 100 days of the administration, deportations were on par with, and at times below, those recorded during the last year of Joe Biden's presidency. The White House stopped publishing daily deportation figures early in 2020. "I'm not satisfied with the numbers," the administration's border tsar, Tom Homan, told reporters at the White House at the end of May. "We need to increase." Homan added that the Trump administration had "increased the teams a lot" and that "we expect a fast increase in the number of arrests". Several senior ICE officials - including Kenneth Genalo, its top deportation official - have left their roles at the agency in recent months. In February, ICE also moved two top officials overseeing deportations, as well as the agency's acting director, Caleb Vitello. At the time of the more recent reshuffle, the agency characterised the move as organisational realignments that will "help ICE achieve President Trump and the American people's mandate of arresting and deporting illegal aliens and making American communities safe". How LA erupted over a rumour Everything we know about the protests Analysis: A political fight Trump is eager to have The Department of Homeland Security said in a press release that the immigrants detained in the recent Los Angeles raids included individuals convicted of sex crimes, burglary, and drug related charges, among other offences. Local immigration advocates and community members, however, say that families have been torn apart and nonviolent immigrants detained. At a rally on Monday, Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado said that a Friday raid at a warehouse in the Fashion District "was not about public safety, it was a fear driven, state violence designed to silence, to intimidate, to disappear". While opinion polls show that Trump's immigration policies are popular with a majority of Americans, some of his backers have expressed concern about tactics. The co-founder of Latinas for Trump, for example, Florida State Senator Ileana Garcia, wrote on X that "this is not what we voted for". "I understand the importance of deporting criminal aliens, but what we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings - in many cases, with credible fear of persecution claims - all driven by a Miller-like desire to satisfy a self-fabricated deportation goal," she added. Federal authorities have conducted more frequent immigration raids across the US, in states that lean both towards Democrats and Republicans. Some Republican-controlled states, like Tennessee, have assisted federal authorities. "California was willing to resist," said John Acevedo, an associate dean at Emory Law School, who studies free speech and protests in the US. Images of violence and resistance on the streets of Los Angeles gave Trump a catalyst for the deployment of the National Guard. "For his base, it does quite a bit. It shows he's serious, and allows them to show he will use all means necessary to enforce his [immigration] rules," Prof Acevedo said. Protesters in Los Angeles - which calls itself a sanctuary city, meaning it limits co-operation with federal immigration enforcement - did not relish the role they believed the administration had chosen for their city. "This is my people, you know, I'm fighting for us," said Maria Gutierrez, a Mexican-American who protested for two days in Paramount, a city in LA County that saw protests after residents spotted ICE agents in the area. The unrest there involved looting and at least one car burning. Authorities used rubber bullets and tear gas. She said there are some protesting in LA, including those in the nearby city of Compton, that share a belief that they were protecting the city from immigration enforcement and saw the Trump administration's threats as a challenge. Ms Gutierrez believed undocumented immigrants who commit violent offences should be targeted, but not those who she believes work hard and aspire to a better life. "This is our city. We're angry, we know how to protect ourselves and this isn't going to scare us," she said. But the community is not united in support for the protests that have captured national attention. Juan, who lives near Paramount, came to the US illegally and later became a citizen, but supports ICE's actions. "ICE agents have a job to do, just like you and I," said Juan, who asked the BBC to withhold his last name given the federal operations in the area. He said he worked for years as a day labourer, but gained citizenship and has four children who graduated from college. "It's hard," he said. "I have family who don't have papers, too. "But you can't really fight it if you're here and you're not supposed to be." "A crime is a crime," he said.
