Roy Cooper, the former Democratic governor of North Carolina, announced Monday he is running for the U.S. Senate. It’s a big recruitment win for Democrats who are hoping to flip the Tar Heel seat in the 2026 midterm elections.
The race could decide which party controls the Senate for the second half of the Trump administration.
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“Right now, our country’s facing a moment as fragile as any as I can remember,” Cooper said in his announcement video. “And the decisions we make in the next election will determine if we even have a middle class in America anymore.”
Who is leaving the Senate?
Cooper is running for the seat vacated by Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has announced his retirement at the end of his term. Tillis decided not to run due to frustration with the Republican budget reconciliation package, which he said will cut healthcare for low-income families and come back to bite the Republican party in the next election.
Republicans hold both of North Carolina’s Senate seats. Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in the state since 2008.
Democrats need to flip four seats to gain control of the Senate in 2026. Taking the majority will be a tough task considering they’re also defending seats in states Donald Trump won in 2024, including Georgia and Michigan.
Trump also won North Carolina, where Cooper is considered the favorite to win the Democratic primary. He’s likely to face Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whately, who has the Trump endorsement and served as the state’s GOP chairman until he took the reins of the national organization.
What is Cooper’s messaging?
In his announcement, Cooper echoed recent Democratic messaging, saying Republicans are taking away health care for the lower and middle classes to give tax breaks to the wealthy. Democrats have been spreading that message nationwide.
However, recent polls hint that Democrats’ messaging may not be working. A new Wall Street Journal poll found 63% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of the party, the worst rating in 35 years.
Cooper began his announcement by speaking about an issue that hurt Democrats in 2024 — the cost of living.
“It wasn’t always this hard, because being in the middle class meant something. You could afford a home, your kids went to good schools,” Cooper said. “I know that today for too many Americans the middle-class feels like a distant dream.”
The race is expected to be very close and very expensive — potentially hundreds of millions of dollars.
But Cooper is used to running in close races. He was first elected governor in 2016 after defeating incumbent Republican Pat McCrory by 277 votes, less than a quarter of a percent.
In 2020, he won reelection by just under five percentage points, but Republicans had a strong showing that night and maintained control of the state legislature.
Cooper had to work with Republican legislatures for both his terms as governor. He’s now hoping to flip the script and serve in a Democrat-controlled Congress with a Republican executive.
