Former NC Gov. Roy Cooper to announce bid for U.S. Senate seat

Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has decided to run for North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat and plans to announce his campaign before the end of the month, people familiar with the Democrat’s plans told WRAL News.

The decision brings clarity to Democrats’ strategy to regain the seat they lost in 2014 to incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, who isn’t seeking reelection. It also could shape Republicans’ plans to retain the seat in the chamber they narrowly control. No GOP frontrunner has emerged in the race.

Democrats are trying to flip at least four Senate seats to gain control of the chamber for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s term. To that end, the party is expected to pump money into battleground states — especially North Carolina, where the party hasn’t won a Senate race since 2008. The 2026 race is expected to be one of the most expensive in the nation.

The only Democrat officially in the race is former U.S. Rep Wiley Nickel, who in 2022 beat Trump-endorsed Republican Bo Hines in the Republican-leaning 13th Congressional District. “I've flipped a red seat blue before against Trump's hand-picked candidate, and I can do it again,” Nickel told WRAL on Tuesday.

“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. “I'm building a campaign that can win this race for Senate.”

But many political observers see Cooper — who also has a long history of reaching voters across the aisle — as the strongest candidate for the Democrats.

The two-term governor, who also served in the state legislature and as attorney general, is a prolific fundraiser and hasn’t lost an election in a political career dating to the mid-1980s. The Democrat managed to win North Carolina and remain popular in polls in years when Trump won the state’s electoral college votes — a performance that put Cooper on the running-mate short list for Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential run.

“If you asked any D.C. Democrat who their top choices would be for the party’s nomination in North Carolina, their number one, two, and three picks would be: Roy Cooper, Roy Cooper and Roy Cooper,” said Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College.

Republicans are already focused on him as the likely victor of his party’s nomination.

“We just look forward to welcoming Roy Cooper to the most miserable campaign he's ever going to have,” North Carolina Republican Party spokesperson Matt Mercer said Wednesday.

Cooper has been ramping up his political fundraising efforts, with a focus on Washington. And in recent weeks he has garnered support from some of the state’s top Democrats, including Gov. Josh Stein and Attorney General Jeff Jackson.

Morgan Jackson, a longtime political advisor to Cooper who serves as a spokesman for the former governor, declined to confirm Cooper’s plans on Wednesday. He said Cooper plans to make an announcement in the coming days.

GOP plans, fundraising

Tillis last month said he wouldn’t seek reelection after opposing Trump-backed legislation — which sponsors titled The One Big Beautiful Bill — because it would end Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians. His opposition widened a rift between Tillis and Trump. After Trump said he would consider endorsing other Republicans for the seat, Tillis ended his reelection plans.

Tillis’s decision has led to speculation over who the Republican Party nominee will ultimately 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 have told 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 respond to requests for comment. Whatley also didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

The Republican nomination will likely depend heavily on whomever the president backs in the race. Cooper’s decision could also play a role in who ultimately runs against him, 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. Jackson has said he isn't running for the seat.

David McLennan, a political scientist at Meredith College in Raleigh, thinks Cooper would still be a favorite over a GOP candidate such as Lara Trump due to his own name recognition and record of successful campaigns during years when Republicans won big.

“That being said, North Carolina is a closely divided state, and so it's not going to be an easy election by any stretch of the imagination,” McLennan said. “I would imagine it's going to be an expensive, highly watched race.”

Campaign themes

Democrats have for years tried to convince Cooper to run for federal office. He removed himself from consideration as Harris’s running mate in part because he was considering a 2026 run for Senate.

Cooper has since ramped up public appearances and as he waded more frequently into national political debates. His social media messages have increasingly focused on congressional action, such as the Trump-backed policy bill that ultimately passed without Tillis’s support.

In a July 17 fundraising email, Cooper attacked congressional Republicans for passing the bill, which would eliminate Medicaid coverage for more than 650,000 North Carolinians. “You stood with me before as we fought to pass Medicaid expansion here in NC,” Cooper wrote. “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’s campaign rollout is likely to contain many of those themes, people familiar with the plans tell WRAL. Cooper’s messaging is expected to focus on his desire to serve the state and stand up to Republicans in Washington.

Republicans have continued to target Cooper in messaging — even after he has left office and before any announcement about his future. They are expected to criticize his handling of natural disaster responses, restrictions during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, protests during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, and his inability to influence the Republican-led legislature on a variety of issues.

“Roy Cooper's got a lot to answer for, and that case will be prosecuted thoroughly over the next year and a half,” Mercer said.

Joanna Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, added: “Roy Cooper is about to join a very long list of Democrat governors who tried and failed to be elected to the United States Senate when their support for radical Democrat policies was finally exposed."

Morgan Jackson, the Cooper spokesperson, declined to provide a response to Republicans' comments.

Medicaid expansion, a major focus of Cooper’s July fundraising email, 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.

Cooper’s fundraising letter alluded to rural health care concerns that were also raised by Tillis last month. Tillis said he couldn’t support the Trump-backed 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 frequent use of “rural” in his fundraising email stood out to political analysts. “He has been known to break, or at least eat into, the Republican stronghold of rural North Carolina,” said Bitzer, the Catawba College professor. 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.”

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 Stein have estimated that North Carolina hospitals will lose nearly $40 billion a year due to the Medicaid cuts.