Democrat Roy Cooper announces bid for North Carolina's open U.S. Senate seat

Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper — a popular Democrat who is undefeated in statewide elections over a long political career — said Monday that he would run for this battleground state’s open U.S. Senate seat.

"I thought on it and prayed about it, and I've decided I want to serve as your next United States Senator, because even now, I still believe our best days are ahead of us," Cooper said in a video announcement on his social media channels.

Cooper painted himself as a reluctant candidate — one who didn't want to go to Washington, but felt the need to help North Carolinians. He leaned on his rural Nash County roots, which has connected with a wide swath of North Carolinians over the years, to paint himself as a fighter for the working class.

“Today, for too many Americans, the middle class feels like a distant dream,” he said in the video. “Meanwhile, the biggest corporations and the richest Americans have grabbed unimaginable wealth at your expense.”

The decision ends almost a year of speculation over whether he would compete in what is expected to be one of the most closely watched — and perhaps most expensive — U.S. Senate races in 2026.

Republicans are seeking to retain the seat that incumbent Republican U.S. Sen Thom Tillis will vacate at the end of his term. Democrats need to flip at least four seats during the 2026 elections to regain control of the chamber for the last two years of President Donald Trump’s second term. Republicans are expected to put up a marquee candidate in the race. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley earned Trump’s blessing last week but has yet to formally announce a campaign.

Republicans recognize Cooper's past success winning over moderates — including some Trump supporters — and will seek to portray him in this election as a career politician who sides with far-left interests. And while Cooper seeks to portray himself as standing up for the working class, Republicans will seek to paint the opposite picture by picking away at his policies while in office.

“We’ve seen enough of elitist Roy Cooper and politicians like him who make their living off taxpayers while supporting policies making life harder and unaffordable for North Carolina families,” North Carolina Republican Party spokesman Matt Mercer said this weekend after Cooper spoke at a high-dollar Democratic fundraising event.

Cooper, 68, instantly becomes the favorite to win his party’s nomination in the March primary. Former U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel, the only other Democrat in the race, is expected to suspend his campaign this week and endorse Cooper, people directly familiar with Nickel’s plans told WRAL on Friday. And while it’s not too late for other Democrats to seek the nomination, none are expected to present a major challenge to Cooper, party insiders and political analysts say.

The two-term governor, who also served in the state legislature and as attorney general, hasn’t lost an election in a political career dating to the mid-1980s. Cooper managed to win North Carolina and remain popular in polls even in years when President Donald Trump won the state’s electoral college votes.

Cooper’s popularity in polls while in office and his ability to attract voters from across the political spectrum in a closely contested state put him on the running-mate short list for Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential run. But Cooper removed himself from contention in part because he was eyeing the U.S. Senate seat, people familiar with his plans previously said.

In his campaign video, he highlighted his roots: The Nash County native was born to a school teacher mother, his father a lawyer and farmer. Cooper talked of teaching Sunday School and starting a small law practice. Cooper also promoted his record as attorney general, prosecuting scammers, banks and drug companies. And as governor, he told viewers, he took credit for helping raise teacher pay, recruiting hundreds of thousands of jobs to the state, and helping to expand health care in the state.

"Our country is facing a moment as fragile as any I can remember, and the decisions we make in the next election will determine if we even have a middle class in America anymore," he said.

He repeated those themes in an interview on MSNBC late Monday, telling host Rachel Maddow: "There are so many bad things coming out of Washington that hurt the middle class and hurt people who are trying and dreaming of being in the middle class."

Cooper frequently vetoed state budgets, passed by the Republican-led state legislature, that contained the teacher pay raises he highlighted in his announcement video — in part, he often said while governor, because the legislature wasn't doing enough.

North Carolina's governor has little power, especially after the legislature stripped the office of many of its powers following Cooper's defeat of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in 2016. So while Cooper was never able to enact many of the policies he campaigned on, due to opposition by the legislature, he was able to use the office as a bully pulpit to pressure Republicans into adopting some of his policies. Those wins included Medicaid expansion and the partial repeal of a 2016 law, HB2, that prohibited transgender people from using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity and banned cities and counties from having anti-discrimination rules protecting LGBTQ people or others.

"When North Carolinians vote on who they want to represent them in Washington, they will reject the radical record of Roy Cooper and his party’s far-left agenda," North Carolina Republican Party spokesman Matt Mercer said in a statement on Monday.

Cooper faced criticism for the state’s slow response to two massive hurricanes, Matthew and Florence, that hit in 2016 and 2018. With the shadow of 2024’s Hurricane Helene still likely to be looming in the 2026 race, those earlier disaster responses could also feature prominently in GOP attack ads.

Not 'an easy election'

News of Cooper’s ultimate decision to run broke last week, but his announcement on Monday made it official, bringing clarity to Democratic strategists and fundraisers who are now expected to bombard voters with his messaging and pleas for donations.

Cooper left the governor’s office at the start of this year with $1 million left in his campaign, but he will need tens of millions to counter the expected ad spending against him from the right. Those anti-Cooper ads began even before Cooper’s announcement Monday morning, when on Sunday night the conservative Senate Leadership Fund rolled out a video calling Cooper “just another D.C. liberal in disguise” and highlighting his record of supporting transgender rights.

"U.S. Senate races in North Carolina break the bank every year," Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer said. "I think this one is going to burn the bank down."

Unaffiliated voters make up the biggest voting bloc in the state, followed by Democrats and Republicans, respectively. But Republicans have edged out Democrats in many statewide elections in recent years — especially in U.S. Senate races, where Democrats haven’t scored a win since 2008.

So it won’t be a slam dunk for Cooper, or any Democrat, who would likely face a tough race against the Trump-backed Whatley in November.

“North Carolina is a closely divided state, and so it's not going to be an easy election by any stretch of the imagination,” David McLennan, a political scientist at Meredith College, told WRAL News last week. “I would imagine it's going to be an expensive, highly watched race.”

Democrats are expected to pump money into North Carolina, where the party hasn’t won a Senate race since 2008. Republicans are expected to do the same, hoping to retain Tillis’s seat in the chamber they narrowly control. And they want a candidate who would give full-throated support to Trump’s policies.

Trump has won North Carolina in all three of his campaigns in part because of efforts by Whatley, who led the North Carolina Republican Party for five years before being picked by Trump to run the RNC. He would join a primary field that includes former GOP lieutenant governor candidate Andy Nilsson and former congressional candidate Don Brown. No GOP frontrunner has emerged in the race so far. While Brown and Nilsson plan to stay in the race, bigger names have bowed out of contention, apparently clearing way for Whatley, who is expected to formally announce his campaign this week, people familiar with his plans told WRAL.

Trump's daughter-in-law, Wilmington native Lara Trump, said Thursday that she wouldn't seek the GOP nomination for the seat. U.S. Rep. Pat Harrigan — a Republican who represents North Carolina’s 10th Congressional District, which runs from Winston-Salem to Charlotte’s northern suburbs — was also considered a possibility until he said on social media Saturday that he would seek reelection in the U.S. House.

Republicans have long been preparing for a likely battle against Cooper — even before Tillis said last month that he wouldn’t seek reelection following a public falling out with Trump over the president’s tax-and-spending bill that sponsors titled the One Big Beautiful Bill.

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.

Tillis opposed the Trump-backed bill because it would end Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians — a position Cooper had already been campaigning on, and he mentioned it again in his announcement on Monday.

In a July 17 fundraising email, Cooper attacked congressional Republicans for passing the bill. “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?”

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.

“The decisions we make in the next election will determine if we even have a middle class in America anymore,” Cooper said in his campaign launch video. “... Politicians in D.C. are running up our debt, ripping away our health care, disrespecting our veterans, cutting health for the poor and even putting Medicare and Social Security at risk just to give tax breaks to billionaires. That's wrong, and I've had enough.”

His remarks echoed a speech he gave Saturday during a Democratic Party dinner, his first public appearance since plans of his campaign were first reported.

Cooper’s political fundraising efforts and public remarks on politics — which had long focused on state politics — have increasingly taken on a national scope in social media messages and in public appearances, offering a glimpse into the issues he’s expected to tackle on the campaign trail.

On Saturday, Cooper hit on topics that he focused on while governor — Medicaid, efforts to help North Carolinians reduce medical debt, efforts to push for increased teacher pay and vetoing tighter abortion restrictions. His remarks — particularly those aimed at the middle class — were directed at Washington Republicans.

“Look at what's happening in Washington,” he said. “They are running up our debt. They are disrespecting our veterans. They're cutting help for the hungry, and they're ripping away health care from millions of people, all to give tax breaks to the millionaires and the billionaires. And it's not right.”

Republicans were quick to respond: “Roy Cooper and Democrats want to empower the same people who drove our economy into a ditch,” Mercer, the state Republican Party spokesman, said in his statement after the speech.

WRAL state government reporters Paul Specht and Will Doran, and WRAL Capitol Bureau Chief Laura Leslie contributed to this report.