North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson said Tuesday that he’ll back Roy Cooper in a closely watched race for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat — the latest top Democrat to declare support for the former two-term governor. One minor detail: Cooper hasn’t even entered the race.
Jackson’s support, which came in an exclusive interview with WRAL News, is the latest hint that Cooper could be close to announcing his intentions after months of deliberation over his future plans.
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“I know a guy from Nash County who has been a faithful public servant and would be a strong candidate for North Carolina,” Jackson said, referring to Cooper, adding that he hadn’t spoken directly with Cooper about whether or not he’ll run in 2026.
Asked why he sees Cooper as the Democratic Party’s best chance of flipping the seat that’s currently held by outgoing Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, Jackson repeated: “He's been a faithful public servant who would be a strong candidate for North Carolina.”
Cooper — one of the most popular Democratic politicians in the state — has been weighing a run for the seat since before he finished his second term, which ended in January. The 68-year-old was term-limited from running in 2024 for a third straight term as governor, leading to his now-open political future. But he hasn’t announced definitive plans.
“He continues to strongly consider it,” Morgan Jackson, a longtime Cooper political advisor, told WRAL in an interview Tuesday.
Morgan Jackson isn’t related to the attorney general. His consulting firm, Nexus Strategies, works for many Democratic politicians including Jeff Jackson and Cooper. He said national Democrats have asked Cooper previously to run for federal office, long before this 2026 race.
“It’s never been a political decision for him,” Morgan Jackson said. “It’s a personal decision, how can he best serve the state.”
Questions about Cooper’s future have been revived in recent weeks, following the shake-up on the Republican side of the ticket — and as he has ramped up plans for public appearances, picked up high-profile bids of support, and as he waded more frequently into national political debates.
Tillis said on June 29 that he wouldn't seek reelection after publicly opposing President Donald Trump’s budget plan. Democrats had viewed Cooper as a strong possible contender against Tillis, who was seen as capable of attracting critical moderate voters in this battleground state.
Democratic North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein praised Cooper at a bill-signing event. “I think the world of Roy Cooper,” Stein told reporters. “He has served this state so well … and I think he would be an incredible US senator. But obviously it's his choice to decide to run or not.”
Cooper is now being advertised as a headlining guest at the North Carolina Democratic Party’s Unity Dinner on July 26 in Raleigh. In the meantime, other Democrats have been weighing whether to run. Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis, who represents a northeastern North Carolina district, is also weighing whether to run for U.S. Senate or for reelection to his House district. Meanwhile, former U.S. Congressman Wiley Nickel has already launched an official campaign.
“I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Roy Cooper,” Nickel said in an interview Tuesday. “He was a great governor, and I worked closely with him in the state Senate. But things are urgent right now and it's not in my bones to sit on the sidelines. The fight is happening right now, and I’m the only Democrat in the race.”
Jeff Jackson — a former U.S. congressman, who briefly ran for U.S. Senate in 2022, had been floated as a possible candidate if Cooper doesn’t run. He said Tuesday that he’s staying out of the race no matter what Cooper decides.
“As a soldier, the idea of leaving my post when people are relying on me to do this job just doesn't sit right with me,” said the attorney general, who serves in the Army National Guard in addition to his role leading the N.C. Department of Justice.
Cooper's plans?
The race for Tillis’s seat is expected to be one of the most competitive — and expensive — U.S. Senate battles in the nation. Republicans hold 53 seats in the U.S. Senate, meaning Democrats need to flip at least four seats to gain control of the chamber for the final two years of Trump’s term.
In the hours after Tillis announced his plans to drop out of the race, attention turned to who would replace him on the ballot. Republican insiders say Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, could be a strong GOP candidate for the seat. Other possible GOP candidates include Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, who previously rant the state party, and U.S. Rep. Pat Harrigan, who represents North Carolina’s 10th Congressional District, which runs from Winston-Salem to Charlotte’s northern suburbs.
Attention also turned to Democrats' plans for the race, and Cooper's plans specifically. Cooper served for years in the state Senate before winning two terms each as attorney general and governor. He has never lost an election in North Carolina and has consistently enjoyed positive favorability ratings in polls. He managed to win even in years when Trump won the state’s electoral college votes — a performance that put him on the running-mate short list for Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential run.
Republicans have long been planning for Cooper to run. Numerous internal GOP polls of the race showed Tillis down at least 9 points in hypothetical head-to-head races against Democrats, a Republican operative with direct knowledge of the polls recently told WRAL. The polls pitted Tillis against both Cooper and Jeff Jackson, showing the Republican losing to both.
The North Carolina Republican Party has also targeted Cooper in messaging, even after he left office and before any announcement about his future. In March, the state GOP took time to craft a statement noting Cooper’s post-governorship job teaching at Harvard University, and criticizing his handling of natural disaster responses as well as protests during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.
“Cooper is jetting off to Massachusetts for a paycheck to rebrand his failures as ‘leadership,’” Republican Party spokesman Matt Mercer said at the time. “Good riddance because North Carolina is done letting Roy Cooper fail our state.”
North Carolina hasn’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since Kay Hagan’s 2008 win. She was defeated in 2014 by Tillis, whose second term is soon coming to an end.
The open seat has also set off a scramble among North Carolina Republicans to pick Tillis’ successor. WRAL previously reported Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump would be a favorite, if the Florida resident moves to North Carolina in time to qualify as a state resident.
Cooper, meanwhile, has begun focusing more on national politics. His most recent public statement, a social media post on July 3, was about Trump’s budget plan the day it passed Congress.
“Every day people are struggling to make ends meet with higher prices for food, rent and other bills,” Cooper wrote. “The bill just passed in DC not only doesn’t help them, it actually hurts working families, seniors, children and veterans so those at the top can have big tax breaks. Shameful.”
Other social media posts in recent months have focused on federal issues — a departure from his time in office, when he used social media to focus on state issues, support Democratic candidates and to opine on the performance of the Carolina Hurricanes hockey team.
In a Feb. 26 post, Cooper wrote: “Donald Trump promised he wouldn’t cut Medicaid. But last night, House Republicans in DC voted for a bill that likely rips away health insurance from 630k hard working North Carolinians, especially hurting rural areas like western NC.”
The Medicaid argument was one of the primary reasons Tillis voted against Trump’s budget plan. He said the cuts would cost the state’s health care industry tens of billions of dollars and likely lead to the closing of more rural hospitals. His objection caused Trump to begin considering backing another Republican candidate for Tillis’s seat in 2026.
Senate race likely to be close
Historically in the U.S., midterm elections favor whichever party doesn’t control the White House. That gives Democrats hope for their chances in 2026 at taking back control of the U.S. House and chipping away at Republicans’ U.S. Senate majority, too.
North Carolina didn’t have a Senate race on the ballot in 2018, the last pro-Democratic midterm year.
That has made the state’s 2026 race a big focus for Democrats nationally, who see a good chance at flipping back a seat in a key battleground state.
Nickel, the only Democrat officially in the race, represented Wake County in the state Senate before serving a term in Congress.
He won his 2022 race for a competitive U.S. House district that, on paper, should’ve favored a Republican. He defeated Trump-endorsed challenger Bo Hines with 51.6% of the vote. Nickel was then gerrymandered out of Congress in 2024 when the Republican-led state legislature redrew his district and turned it from a tossup into a deep-red seat.
In pushing his U.S. Senate candidacy, Nickel has focused on his success winning that closely contested 2022 race. If recent history is any indicator, the 2026 U.S. Senate race should be close as well.
“I’ve had to win tough races before, and I’m putting together a team to do it again,” he said.Both of Tillis’ victories in 2014 and 2020 came as he won just under 49% of the vote — just enough to squeak past Democratic and Libertarian challengers in those races. In 2022 the state’s other U.S. Senate seat was won by Republican Ted Budd with 50.5% of the vote, defeating Democrat Cheri Beasley who won the nomination after Jeff Jackson dropped out and endorsed her.
Jeff Jackson served with Nickel in Congress and in the state legislature. He said his Cooper backing wasn’t a slight at his former colleague, Nickel, just a reflection of his view of who’d be best in this particular moment.
“Wiley’s a friend of mine,” the attorney general said. “I have a lot of respect for him, and I think he's one of the hardest working people in politics I've ever met.”