Year 1 in the books for Cooper with mixed results

Defining a governor's legacy one year in can be as difficult to do as it is natural to attempt. This is perhaps more true for Cooper, whose first year was marked by court fights that kept some day-to-day aspects of governing in limbo. His legacy may well hinge upon next year's General Assembly elections and the answer to one question: Can Democrats break the GOP's veto-proof majority in at least one legislative chamber?

"You've got to look at Cooper's position as playing a longer game," said Ferrel Guillory, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill journalism professor who has written about North Carolina politics for decades.

Gov. Roy Cooper campaign promise tracker (first term)

With the limits a governor faces when the other party holds super-majorities in both the House and the Senate, WRAL News approached his one-year review with two primary questions in mind.

Has he governed in line with his campaign promises?

Has he helped set the stage for his party ahead of the 2018 legislative elections?

Surely, Cooper's signature political achievement of the past year was the repeal of House Bill 2.

Plenty of people don't consider House Bill 142, which replaced the controversial law on transgender bathroom usage, to be much of a repeal at all. In fact, a federal lawsuit sparked by House Bill 2 remains, but passage of the replacement legislation was seen as a compromise, and it got North Carolina out of the national headlines.

"He would have liked to go farther," said state Rep. Darren Jackson, D-Wake, the party's leader in the House. "Sometimes, you have to take what you can get."

Some supporters expected Cooper to take a harder line on the issue. But John Hood, who has written a pair of books about North Carolina politics and chairs the board at the right-leaning John Locke Foundation, said the governor did as promised. He dubbed Cooper's action on House Bill 2 "consistent with his campaign, like it or not."

The federal case remains pending, and the proposed settlement incomplete. But the issue has stayed largely below the radar. Whatever impact House Bill 2 had on the state economy has evaporated, according to Kerry Saunders, a commercial real estate executive who sits on the board of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. She said Cooper's done a good job in office.

"House Bill 2's off the table," Saunders said, almost triumphantly. "We're on a roll."

Writ large, the choice between Democrats and Republicans in the 2018 state elections might be: Do you want slightly lower taxes or slightly more state funding, particularly for education?

Republicans plan to continue corporate tax cuts that Cooper's administration says focus too much on the wealthy. His budget office held a press briefing in mid-December with charts showing wage growth lagging other economic gains and job growth concentrated in a handful of metropolitan areas, including Charlotte and the Triangle.

Statewide, the unemployment rate is about 4.1 percent, right at the national rate. For Berger, R-Rockingham, one of the most powerful political leaders in the state, Cooper's biggest sin is showing up at new business "ribbon cuttings to take credit for the benefits of Republican-led tax cuts and reforms and major job-recruiting tools and teacher raises included in the budget he vetoed – all while lambasting those laws to raise money from his far-left base."

"I think he showed his commitment for public education," said Mark Jewell, president of the North Carolina Association of Educators. "(Voters are) not looking for tax breaks. ... They want a strong public school system."

Guillory noted that Cooper got some of what he wanted from his first budget, though not necessarily because he wanted it. The legislature raised teacher pay, but not as much as Cooper proposed. It added money to the state's pre-kindergarten program. The business community said that was crucial, Guillory said, and Cooper's voice "was among the voices."

"You can think of issues," Guillory said, "where Cooper added his voice to a chorus the legislature responded to."

Hood, who has written about state politics since 1986, said Cooper has kept the lowest profile he's ever seen for a first-year governor.

"I think that is a conscious decision," Hood said. "I truly believe the main Cooper strategy of 2017 has been, 'Keep your head down.'"

The 2018 elections are huge. Sentiment against President Donald Trump may well help Democrats dent GOP legislative control. Why not let Trump be the story "with a capital S?" Hood said.

Guillory said the tenor of Cooper's year has matched his campaign.

"Just as his campaign was modulated, his first year in office has been modulated," he said. "He's tried to win where he can win."

"In my opinion, that did not go well for him," Hood said, "which is why we haven't heard much about it. It looked like he was egging on a controversy that most people did not want to experience."

Except some people absolutely want it.

"I have mixed feelings about the Cooper legacy at this point," Rev. William Barber said last week.

Barber is the immediate past president of the state NAACP and organizer of the "Moral Monday" protest movement, arguably making him the highest-profile progressive leader in the state. He said Cooper has been strong in supporting Medicaid expansion, a federally funded increase in health insurance for the working poor, and has been "strong at standing up to the power grab of the legislature."

Berger, of course, disagrees on that last point. He said in a statement that Cooper, "used his first year in office to pick fights with Republicans rather than work together" and "sued his own state time and again to block commonsense, popular reforms."

Barber chastised Cooper, however, for not granting clemency to Dontae Sharpe, who is locked up for a Greenville murder despite recanted testimony. Sharpe's case was the primary reason Cooper was dis-invited from the NAACP's annual conference in October.

Barber also lamented Cooper's "great failure" in signing legislation that limits immigrant farm workers' ability to organize. Farm workers have sued Cooper over that bill, which passed with bipartisan support.

In general, Barber said, he doesn't hear enough from Cooper about the poor.

Cooper campaigned last year, in Guillory's analysis, as a "regular moderate to liberal Democrat." He wasn't for overthrowing systems, and he didn't lurch left, Guillory said. "He just opposed House Bill 2."

He also won a very close election, as opposed to a landslide's mandate. But Barber said progressive votes helped Cooper win, and he called on the governor to move left heading into the 2018 elections.

"Gov. Cooper has the opportunity to form one of the strongest progressive white, black, brown coalitions in the South," Barber said. "His election can show a pathway forward in the South, and I hope he will embrace that instead of stepping back."

Hood said Cooper faces a decision along those lines. Move left, to where much of the Democratic Party already is, or continue a more moderate course and hope the more progressive wing still turns out on Election Day.

As for whether Cooper has kept his promises this first year in office, Hood said the governor's biggest pitch in 2016 was probably that he'd be "a check on Republicans." That, Hood said, Cooper has tried to do.

"Cooper really ran more against McCrory, in my view, than he ran for a specific actionable agenda," he said. "So, holding him accountable for that specific action agenda is kind of impossible."