Former Gov. Roy Cooper Jumps Into North Carolina's U.S. Senate Race
Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared his candidacy for a U.S. Senate seat in the state, giving Democrats their top recruit in one of the marquee Senate races of the 2026 midterm elections.
“The decisions we make in the next election will determine if we even have a middle class in America anymore,” Cooper said in a video Monday on social media announcing his run. “I never really wanted to go to Washington. I just wanted to serve the people of North Carolina right here, where I’ve lived all my life. But these are not ordinary times.”
Cooper, who served four terms as attorney general and two terms as governor, is popular in the state. His decision to run is a major victory for Senate Democrats, who aggressively pitched him on running and believe Cooper’s candidacy and a favorable political environment could help them win a senate race in North Carolina for the first time in nearly two decades.
The seat is held by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who announced his retirement earlier this summer after saying he could not support the Medicaid cuts included in the GOP’s massive domestic policy legislation, a step that drew condemnation from President Donald Trump.
Trump and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are now backing Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley for the seat, though Whatley has yet to officially declare a bid. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, considered running but decided not to mount a bid.
Former Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel had entered the Senate race, but is now expected to drop out to clear the field for Cooper.
The threat Cooper poses to the GOP was made clear by the ferociousness of the party’s response to his announcement. The National Republican Senatorial Committee immediately blasted the former governor.
“Roy Cooper is a Democrat lapdog who spent his time as Governor sabotaging President Trump, doing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ bidding, releasing violent illegal aliens into North Carolina streets, and championing radical transgender ideology,” said Joanna Rodriguez, the group’s communications director.
Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC controlled by allies of Senate Majority Leader John Thune, is also speaking up with a $200,000 ad buy attacking Cooper as “radical Roy.”
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Cooper is a well-known moderate, but his launch video struck several populist notes, boasting of his prosecutions of big banks and drug companies, and slamming the “biggest corporations and the richest Americans [who] have grabbed unimaginable wealth at your expense.”
Democrats have previously tried to recruit Cooper to run for Senate in 2008 and 2010, but he resisted their entreaties both times before running for governor in 2016.
A friend of former Vice President Kamala Harris from when they simultaneously served as state attorneys general, Cooper was under consideration to be her running mate in 2024 but withdrew his name.