Former Governor Roy Cooper Launches NC Senate Campaign
On Monday, former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper (D) announced his campaign run for the state Senate seat.
He officially announced his run for the campaign in a video posted on social media. This comes after former Senator Thom Tillis (R) announced last month that he would not be seeking reelection, making the North Carolina Senate seat a competitive race in the midterm elections.
“I never really wanted to go to Washington. I just wanted to serve the people of North Carolina, right here, where I’ve lived all my life. But these are not ordinary times,” Cooper said in the video.
State Democrats believe the popular former governor will give them a strong chance to take back one of the Senate NC seats from Republicans.
On Saturday, Cooper spoke at the Democratic Party’s annual “Unity Dinner,” where he hinted at his run for Senate.
Aside from the former state governor, former NC Representative Wiley Nickel announced his campaign run for Senate in April.
On the Republican side, former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley and Lara Trump, President Trump’s daughter-in-law, were both speculated to consider running for the NC Senate seat.
“We need him,” Nina Szlosberg, a family friend, said in an interview with the Raleigh News & Observer. “We need him in North Carolina to represent us. We need him in the United States to help our country, at a very difficult time and the world needs him, because the world needs America to be the best we can be.”
In response to Cooper’s Senate run announcement, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson (R-NC) released the following statement:
“Roy Cooper spent decades dragging North Carolina left, and now he wants to do the same to America. Roy Cooper supports men playing in girls’ sports and raising taxes on working families. Roy Cooper marched with protestors and then let them burn Raleigh. And Roy Cooper assured all of America that Joe Biden was perfectly capable of being President for four more years. Roy Cooper doesn’t want to make America great again; he just wants to take America Left.”
