Gov. Roy Cooper has promises to keep

Gov. Roy Cooper made lots of promises on the campaign trial. Now that he's in office, can he keep them?

Posted 5:23 p.m. Jan 10, 2017 — Updated 7:05 p.m. Jul 13, 2018

Mark Binker

RALEIGH, N.C. — From promising to raise teacher pay to pledging his policy prescriptions would not require any tax increases, Gov. Roy Cooper made a lot of promises on the campaign trail in 2016.

Gov. Roy Cooper campaign promise tracker (first term)

But can he keep them?

As we did with Gov. Pat McCrory, WRAL News is going to keep tabs on what Cooper pledged to do and whether he follows through.

Promises range from items that headlined the 2016 campaign, such as repealing House Bill 2, to smaller goals, such as reviewing all the state's economic development programs. We assembled our promise tracker from pledges made on Cooper's campaign materials and statements he made during news interviews and debates.

The governor acted contrary to what he promised on the campaign trail.

Readers and viewers also submitted suggestions for items we should track. The most frequent viewer requests involved House Bill 2 and a pledge not to raise taxes.

We'll rate his performance on a six-tier scale, from promise kept, signaled by a green thumbs up, to a broken promise, which gets the skull and crossbones.

You can check out all 31 promises we're tracking and how Cooper scores on the newly launched Roy Cooper Promise Tracker page.

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