The Case for a Vice President Cooper:
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper Brings Much To the Table (Governmentally and Electorally).
Feel free to check the entire blog archives from “Political Pulse” & “Salzillo Report” on the 2024 primary cycle, rural outreach, redistricting litigation, base dynamics, campaign organization, the current media landscape, the issues at stake, Project 2025, Build Back Better, the progressive movement, the true story about 2024 VP contender Gina Raimondo, and much more.
There will be much more to discuss about Vice President Kamala Harris. She and President Biden alike represent the hope we should have in this country and in the American Dream. Though that Dream has been a lot harder to reach than ever before, we truly have some great reasons for optimism.
President Biden was the Scranton kid with a childhood stutter, who later overcame great personal tragedy to be one of the greatest and most consequential presidents in our history. Vice President Harris came from a family of South Asian immigrants and Jamaicans who settled in California. She was bused to school, graduated from a HBCU (Historically Black College & University), and became a lawyer.
She was elected as San Francisco District Attorney in 2003, and then as California Attorney General in 2010. In 2016, she became only the 2nd black woman to be elected US Senator. Soon thereafter, she was chosen to be Vice President in 2020.
Anyone know the American Dream story of North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper? If not, we’ll share it. That story is an important part of why Cooper would be a great running mate and Vice President for Kamala Harris. JD Vance may write and pretend to care about the plight and suffering of the American working and middle classes; Roy Cooper, however, lives and breathes it.
Roy Cooper is someone who has seen the toll of deindustrialization, agriculture mechanization, public corruption, and the erosion of rights & liberties on our American economy and society. His wealth of experience in North Carolina offers him a unique ability to relate to agricultural and industrial communities alike in both the South and Industrial Midwest. That kind of expertise in “the whole of America” would serve the next administration extremely well in Washington, DC, particularly as we seek to bring the working class back into the Democratic Party tent.
Governor Cooper attended public schools and worked summers on his parents’ farm. He attended UNC Chapel Hill on a Morehead Scholarship and got a Juris Doctor degree in law school. He went on to become a Sunday school teacher for a while. Politically, he was active for years with the Young Democrats, and would even be appointed to the North Carolina State Goals & Policy Board by Governor Jim Hunt in 1979—all while still attending law classes.
In 1986, he unseated a longtime incumbent to be elected to the NC State House. He later served and was the Majority Leader of the North Carolina Senate as well. Known as a young common sense, bipartisan reformer, he joined a coalition of dissident Democrats and Republicans to oust the sitting House Speaker in 1989 on the premise of having a more deliberative and open process in Raleigh. As a State Senator, Cooper pushed for greater access to public records, a toughening of the open meetings law, and gave the Governor more veto power in the state constitution.
In 2000, Cooper was elected the top prosecutor of the state—that is, Attorney General. In fact, he was so popular that he won every other election by a landslide and was unopposed once as well. As Attorney General, he earned widespread acclaim on both sides of the aisle for his handling of the Duke Lacrosse Team rape case, toughening gun laws after the Virginia Tech mass shooting, and auditing the state’s forensic lab in response to faulty information that wrongly convicted a man (Gregory Taylor) of murder. And despite bizarre comments from state officials, Cooper took the fight to Duke Energy for a coal ash spill that contaminated groundwater that people near the Dan River used, along with taking on predatory lenders. Cooper was both a law enforcement champion and a diligent criminal justice reformer.
Having run for two terms as Governor, he outperformed the Democratic presidential ticket twice in a state Trump won both times. In 2016, he narrowly unseated GOP incumbent Pat McCrory even as Hillary Clinton lost the state by 4 points. In 2020, Cooper held back the GOP Lt. Governor Dan Forest by 4.5 points and earned more votes statewide than both Trump or Biden did (including garnering 150,000 more votes than the Biden-Harris presidential ticket).
This long record gives Governor Cooper the ideal experience on the issues that matter so much today. With GOP legislative supermajorities (you heard that right), and draconian Jim Crow 2.0 voting laws, he has seen the toll of election denial on our democracy. He knows the costs on society when gun laws are loosened and reproductive access is severely curtailed. He knows the price of right wing culture wars from what took place with the 2016 bathroom bill and ongoing attacks on the state’s LGBTQ community today. He has seen what a MAGA agenda in action looks like and what good leadership nationally really means. He knows what a laboratory of autocracy does to people.
And yes, he knows what the struggle is like. It is why agriculture has been an issue near and dear to him since he first ran for office nearly 40 years ago. He sees the stake of having a strong manufacturing base from the decline of his state’s textile industry over the decades. He knows the respect teachers deserve, and why they should have so much better than substandard poverty wages. He knows how hard it is to find healthcare when legislative bodies like the NC legislature refused to expand Medicaid statewide until very recently. He understands the urgency of the climate crisis because of how hurricanes, tornadoes, and extreme heat have impacted his state alone in recent years.
Finally, he knows how the political elites neglected the needs of working families because he ran against the status quo of trickle down tax cuts and state corporate welfare in the first place.
Unlike the faker JD Vance, Roy Cooper can relate to the places that feel left behind and taken for granted. He understands that in work, there is dignity. He knows we should reward merit over wealth, and that we should champion the interests of working families and the middle class over those of the corporate special interests and dark money groups. And he knows our diversity and talent is a dynamic national treasure, not a sign of weakness.
Roy Cooper is the embodiment of the American Dream. He is an icon and symbol of what a big tent Democratic Party of the working class & middle class looks like. He is the embodiment of a nation that can come together in all stripes and backgrounds to fight for the common good of “We the People.” He doesn’t have to write a book to tell his roots, because his record already shows them.
I do want to acknowledge that he is not the only qualified running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris. There are great names in the mix right now (those not named Gina Raimondo of course), from my 2nd pick Tim Walz, Gretchen Whitmer, and Josh Shapiro, to Andy Beshear, Mark Kelly, and JB Pritzker. In fact, I think the hard part for the Harris team is not who to choose from, but who to not turn down because of the bench of talent out there.
Electability is not the only question though, nor is even experience. The big task for a Vice President is not what they do by themselves, but by how they work as a team with the President. Obama’s selection of Joe Biden (who became Vice President at the age of 66, by the way) was the best possible VP pick not only on electability and governance but on building a close working relationship and complimenting each other as a team. It was built in an organic relationship and common values.
The same can be said about Kamala Harris & Roy Cooper. They have known each other for more than 14 years when they both were elected Attorneys General from their respective states, and have remained friends & allies now. Nothing succeeds in politics quite like friendship and trust.
Beyond North Carolina, a Harris-Cooper ticket can reshift the 2024 map again. It is not only beneficial to rally the party base or even turn out suburban swing voters in droves, but it also offers a direct appeal—and most likely a very effective appeal—to blue-collar working class voters and rural electorates all across America. North Carolina is representative of many states in our Union today from Georgia, Texas, Florida, and Virginia, to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The struggles of North Carolinians are ones not much different from these other states at all. And yes, as someone who has been undefeated statewide in North Carolina for 24 years, Cooper has already shown that he can bring more people into the political process, which is what he will do across the country as well as in November if he is nominated.
A Harris-Cooper ticket also puts a spotlight on the most pressing campaign issues this cycle, from healthcare, education, energy, labor issues, small businesses, taxes, costs, income inequality, and rebuilding our economy further, to the climate crisis, voting rights, abortion access, gun safety, criminal justice reform, and the treatment of LGBTQ people in society. This ticket best demonstrates what a MAGA agenda nationally looks like in action vs. our forward-looking vision.
Finally, a Harris-Cooper ticket offers a deep bench of experience in state government, which allows Cooper to be a direct voice for the governors and their states in the White House. His own time as Governor and Attorney General makes him well suited to be Vice President. And, a close working relationship with Harris lays a great foundation for good governance.
All of which makes a case for the strongest running mate in the nation that can be on the ballot this November, which goes to North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper. You can easily imagine the Ohio con artist being chewed up to bits by this Southern Governor champion of the working class.