Roy Cooper

Roy Asberry Cooper III (born June 13, 1957) is an American attorney and politician serving since 2017 as the 75th governor of North Carolina.

He attended Northern Nash High School, graduating in 1975.

While in high school, he served in the Youth Legislative Assembly as a representative for Nash County.

He received the Morehead Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergraduate studies.

As an undergraduate at UNC, he was a member of Chi Psi Fraternity.

He was elected president of the university's Young Democrats.

Roy Asberry Cooper III was born in Nashville, North Carolina, to Beverly Thorne (née Batchelor), a teacher, and Roy Asberry Cooper II, a lawyer and political consultant who later co-chaired Jim Hunt's 1976 gubernatorial campaign.

Cooper attended public school and worked on his parents' tobacco farm during summer.

Cooper graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1979.

He earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1982.

While in law school, then-Governor Jim Hunt appointed Cooper to the State Goals and Policy Board, an advisory group that sought to achieve long- and short-range goals and policies for the state.

He was the youngest person ever to serve on the board.

In 1982, Cooper joined the law firm Fields, Cooper & Henderson in Nashville, North Carolina, the same firm his father had been a member of.

Three years later, he was named a partner in the firm.

Cooper served as the Rocky Mount and Nash County chairman of Lauch Faircloth's unsuccessful 1984 gubernatorial campaign.

He was a member of the Rocky Mount Chamber of Commerce and UNC-Chapel Hill's Board of Visitors.

On November 19, 1985, Cooper filed to run for the North Carolina House of Representatives in the 72nd district.

He challenged incumbent Allen Barbee in the Democratic primary and ran on a campaign of resolving a school merger dispute in Nash County.

Cooper won the primary with 5,966 votes (76%) to Barbee's 884 (24%), and he was unopposed in the general election.

He continued to practice law while serving in the legislature.

The nonpartisan North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research ranked Cooper the most effective freshman senator.

He began his career as a lawyer and in 1986 was elected to represent the 72nd district in the North Carolina House of Representatives.

He was a member of the House Judiciary Committee during his first term and became its chairman in 1989.

Later that year, he joined Republicans and dissident Democrats to unseat Speaker Liston B. Ramsey.

He also voted with all House Republicans and 15 Democrats in favor of an unsuccessful attempt to amend the constitution to grant the governor veto power over legislation.

In 1991, he was appointed a member of the North Carolina Senate, a position he held until 2001.

Cooper was appointed to the North Carolina Senate in 1991 to serve the remainder of Senator Jim Ezzell's term after Ezzell's death in a motor vehicle accident.

In 1995, Cooper negotiated a compromise bill to schedule a referendum to amend the constitution and grant the governor veto power.

In 1997, he was elected Majority leader of the Senate upon Richard Conder's retirement.

He was elected North Carolina Attorney General in 2000 and reelected in 2004, 2008, and 2012, serving just under 16 years, the second-longest tenure for an attorney general in the state's history.

Hunt also appointed Cooper to the Interim Balance Growth Board and the North Carolina 2000 Commission.

Cooper filed to run for North Carolina attorney general on January 10, 2000.

A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 49th attorney general of North Carolina from 2001 to 2017 and in the North Carolina General Assembly in both the House of Representatives and Senate from 1987 to 2001.

During his last term in the Senate, he was elected to the North Carolina Bar Association's Board of Governors, a position he held until June 2002.

Cooper's accomplishments in the legislature include passing legislation to punish children who brought guns to school, making public records more accessible, toughening the state's open meetings law, and giving the governor more veto power.

Cooper defeated Republican incumbent Pat McCrory for the governorship in a close race in the 2016 election.

This election made Cooper the first challenger to defeat a sitting governor in the state's history.

Before he took office, the Republican-dominated legislature passed bills in a special session to reduce the power of the governor's office.

The legislature has overridden several of Cooper's vetoes of legislation.

Cooper was reelected in 2020, defeating Republican nominee and Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest.