Cooper ramps up fundraising, fueling speculation over possible US Senate bid

Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is ramping up his political fundraising efforts, with a focus on national politics — another sign the Democrat could be close to announcing a plan to run for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat.

In a recent fundraising email to supporters, Cooper slammed congressional Republicans for passing a bill backed by President Donald Trump that would eliminate Medicaid coverage for more than 650,000 North Carolinians. The letter included a link that leads readers to a sign-up page, which then redirects readers to a donation page.

“You stood with me before as we fought to pass Medicaid expansion here in NC,” Cooper said in the July 17 email. “Now, we need to stand together again. Will you let me know you’re with me by adding your name to support health care access for every American?”

Cooper has kept open the political campaign apparatus that operated his runs for governor, even though he was term-limited in 2024 from seeking a third straight term. It was that campaign — Cooper for North Carolina — that sent the fundraising email.

Medicaid expansion was Cooper’s signature achievement during his time as governor. He worked for years to convince the Republican-led legislature to expand coverage in North Carolina — a move that brought in billions of dollars a year for the state’s health care industry by providing health insurance for hundreds of thousands of previously uninsured residents.

His focus on “Washington Republicans” in his recent fundraising email has stoked continued speculation that he will seek his party’s nomination in the race for the seat being vacated by Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis. The 2026 race is expected to be one of the most expensive in the nation.

Morgan Jackson, a longtime political advisor to Cooper who serves as a spokesman for the former governor, didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment. He told WRAL on July 8 that Cooper “continues to strongly consider” a Senate run. Cooper was expected to make a decision before the end of the month.

“It seems like if he wasn't going to get into the fray of things — or at least continue to strongly consider it — these kinds of emails necessarily would not go out under his name,” Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College, told WRAL News on Tuesday. “But he's asking for people to sign up. He's asking for people's emails. That's usually a pretty good indicator of [someone] building a campaign organization.”

It’s common for politicians to send these kinds of emails as they mull future plans. Cooper’s email makes particular sense because it’s in response to policy that threatens one of Cooper’s biggest accomplishments as governor, said Asher Hildebrand, a professor of politics at Duke University.

“Is it the type of email that you send if you have no further ambition or no interest in generating email lists? Probably not,” said Hildebrand, who worked as chief of staff for Democratic former U.S. Rep. David Price.

Tillis last month said he would step down from his Senate seat after opposing the Trump-backed legislation — which sponsors titled The One Big Beautiful Bill. His opposition widened a rift between Tillis and Trump. After Trump said he would start considering endorsing other Republicans for the seat, Tillis said he wouldn’t seek reelection. Tillis said he couldn’t support the bill because it cut Medicaid to help pay for new tax cuts, saying it would lead to “tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities.”

Cooper’s fundraising letter alluded to Tillis’s concerns for the state’s rural population, mentioning the word “rural” several times. That theme stood out to Bitzer. “He has been known to break, or at least eat into, the Republican stronghold of rural North Carolina,” Bitzer said. The references to rural North Carolina could hint at where Cooper might campaign, he said.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told WRAL in an interview Tuesday that the Trump administration rejects any suggestion that the GOP spending bill could hurt local economies.

“As for rural hospitals, the administration wants to protect those good paying jobs,” Leavitt said, adding that certain provisions “ensure that those local hospitals are protected and are getting the resources that they need from the federal government.”

Indeed, the legislation includes $50 billion for a fund to help the rural hospitals hit hardest by Medicaid cuts. However, it would spend a maximum of $10 billion a year, for only five years, on hospitals across the nation. Tillis and Democratic Gov. Josh Stein have estimated that North Carolina hospitals will lose nearly $40 billion a year due to the Medicaid cuts.

An expanding field?

Former U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel is the only Democrat currently in the race for Tillis’s seat. But Cooper is considered Democrats’ best chance of having a Democrat in the U.S. Senate since Tillis beat incumbent Kay Hagen in 2014, political analysts say.

“Right now, I'm focused on continuing to hold this administration accountable for the working families of North Carolina, and making my case to the voters about a better vision for the future,” Nickel said in a statement Tuesday. “I'm building a campaign that can win this race for Senate.”

Nickel beat Trump-endorsed Republican Bo Hines in the 2022 race for the competitive 13th Congressional District seat, which leaned Republican. “I've flipped a red seat blue before against Trump's hand-picked candidate, and I can do it again,” Nickel said.

Cooper, 68, also has a strong track record at the ballot box. The two-term governor — who also served in the state legislature and as attorney general — has never lost an election in a political career dating to the mid-1980s, and he consistently enjoyed positive ratings in polls while governor. The Democrat managed to win North Carolina 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.

In recent weeks, Cooper has picked up vocal support from some of the state’s top Democrats — despite not actually being in the race. North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson said July 8 that he’d back Cooper in the race, if he were to run. Stein praised Cooper at a July 1 bill-signing event, saying: “He would be an incredible U.S. senator.”

Cooper, Stein and Jackson are clients of the same political strategic consultancy, Nexus Strategies. Morgan Jackson is a co-founder of the firm.

Tillis’s departure has also led to speculation over who the Republican Party nominee will be. Former lieutenant governor candidate Andy Nilsson and former congressional candidate Don Brown have announced their intentions to seek the GOP nomination. However, Republicans expect bigger names to seek the president’s blessing to enter the race.

Republican insiders tell WRAL that Trump's daughter-in-law, Wilmington native Lara Trump, is considering a run despite living in Florida currently. Other possible GOP candidates include Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, who previously ran the state party and is registered to vote in North Carolina. U.S. Rep. Pat Harrigan — who represents North Carolina’s 10th Congressional District, which runs from Winston-Salem to Charlotte’s northern suburbs — is also a possibility.

Representatives of Lara Trump and Harrigan didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Whatley didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Not all the nation’s presidential battlegrounds have a U.S. Senate election on the ballot this year — putting extra emphasis on North Carolina. Republicans hold 53 seats in the chamber, meaning Democrats need to flip at least four seats to gain control of it for the final two years of Trump’s term. That’s why the North Carolina race is expected to be one of the most competitive and expensive political battles in 2026, regardless of who ends up running.

Expensive race expected

Tillis’ successful reelection campaign in 2020, in which he won 48.7% of the vote and held off Democrat Cal Cunnginham and Libertarian Shannon Bray, was the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history at the time. The candidates and outside groups spent more than $280 million trying to influence the state’s voters that year, the Associated Press reported. The record was eclipsed in 2024 by a U.S. Senate race in Ohio, but it could be broken again in 2026, possibly in the race to replace Tillis.

The Republican nomination will likely depend heavily on whomever the president backs in the race. Cooper’s decision on whether to run could also influence who runs on the Republican side, people familiar with the GOP’s thinking told WRAL.

Having the Trump name on the ballot is seen as a boon to Republicans, who helped Lara Trump’s father-in-law win North Carolina in recent presidential elections. But Cooper could be a deterrent to her running due in part to the Democrat’s ability to attract votes from across the political spectrum, according to a person familiar with the GOP’s thinking. If that’s the case, attention could turn to Whatley, who has been a formidable fundraiser for the Republican Party.

Cooper has also been a prolific fundraiser — raising and spending about $41 million for his last run for governor in 2020 — and has kept up those efforts despite not being able to seek reelection last year.

He raised just shy of $9 million from 2021 to 2024, spent $8.2 million — some of which supported his own political activities but most of which went to fellow Democratic politicians who were running in 2022 and 2024 — and headed into 2025 with $962,000 still in his campaign war chest. It wasn’t immediately clear how much money Cooper’s campaign has on hand now. The deadline hasn’t yet passed for candidates to report their spending and fundraising numbers for the first half of the year.

Republicans have long been planning for the possibility of a Cooper-for-Senate campaign. Numerous internal GOP polls of the race showed Tillis down at least 9 points in hypothetical head-to-head races against Democrats, WRAL previously reported. The polls pitted Tillis against both Cooper and Jackson, the attorney general, showing the Republican losing to both.

The North Carolina Republican Party has also continued to target Cooper in messaging, even after he has left office and before any announcement about his future. For instance, the state GOP took time in March 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.

If Cooper decides to run, Republicans are expected to continue those lines of attack while also focusing on Cooper-backed policies that might be opposed by Republicans, according to North Carolina Republican Party spokesperson Matt Mercer. “That's something that will be the center of the race, and a referendum on the race,” he said.

WRAL News anchor Ashley Rowe contributed to this report.