Why We’re Ready to Roll With Roy
Former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper has officially announced that he’s running for U.S. Senate. And we couldn’t be more excited.
Roy Cooper knows North Carolina. He knows what it’s like to grow up here, to raise a family here. His mother was a public school teacher, his father a farmer. He grew up working on a tobacco farm in Nash County, eventually going on to attend UNC Chapel Hill. He taught Sunday school while practicing law, raised a family while serving in the General Assembly.
Cooper is uniquely prepared for this moment– a moment when health care is being ripped away from countless people, when costs are rising on the essentials, when things are getting a bit tougher each day for the working class as billionaires continue collecting massive tax breaks. Cooper comes from the working class. He fights for the working class. And he doesn’t just fight– he wins.
Here’s a look at just a few of Roy Cooper’s accomplishments, and why we’re so excited for him to be leading in this moment.
Worked with Republicans to Expand Medicaid, Insuring Over 600,000 People
North Carolina expanded Medicaid in 2023, a monumental feat that resulted in over 600,000 people gaining health insurance who wouldn’t be able to afford it otherwise.
Medicaid expansion had a quick and meaningful impact on our state. In the first year following expansion, 3.8 million prescriptions were filled for heart health, diabetes, seizures, and other illnesses. $58 million in claims were covered for dental services. More than a third of expansion enrollees lived in rural areas, providing crucial access to care in areas that often lack it.
Expansion was never a given. Republicans were firmly opposed at the start. As Cooper put it, “We had the challenge of moving Medicaid expansion past the politics of ‘Obamacare,’ and the way we needed to do that was get the constituents of Republican legislators to ask them for it.”
It takes a unique leader to get folks to move past the politics. Cooper did it, making us one of the first states to expand Medicaid in the South. We did it with bipartisan support, and now hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians have access to lifesaving care that they wouldn’t have had before– care that is now at risk due to Trump’s federal Medicaid cuts.
Worked with Hospitals to Erase $4 Billion in Medical Debt
If you’ve ever been uninsured, you know how terrifying it is to get sick. Not because of the illness itself, but because of how expensive it is to treat the illness. You skip necessary doctor’s appointments. You hesitate to call an ambulance because an Uber would be cheaper. You start thinking of heart attacks and car accidents as crippling financial burdens rather than personal tragedies. It’s a rough place to be in.
Medical debt isn’t a choice, yet so many are burdened with it anyway. In 2022, roughly 20% of North Carolinians had medical debt in collections. Gov. Cooper tackled this problem head on, eliminating medical debt for more than 2 million people.
How’d he do it? He worked directly with 99 hospitals across the state, creating a first-of-its-kind partnership between the government and medical providers. Basically, Cooper invested in hospitals that were willing to help out their patients. It was completely voluntary– hospitals had to opt in. They did, and it worked, providing crucial relief to millions of North Carolinians.
Strengthened NC’s Economy, Creating Over 640,000 Jobs
North Carolina’s economy soared under Cooper. We ranked number one in the nation for business both in 2022 and 2023. Over Cooper’s time as governor, North Carolina gained more than 640,000 jobs and secured major investments from global companies like Toyota and Boom Supersonic.
Cooper wasn’t only looking out for private sector jobs. During his tenure, he raised teacher salaries by 19%, all while maintaining a balanced state budget year after year. Our economy remains strong, and North Carolina continues to recruit good-paying jobs in manufacturing, clean energy, and technology industries to both rural and urban parts of the state.
Never Done
Roy Cooper knows how to run a fiscally responsible government that supports its people. He knows how to build an economy that works for all of us, not just those at the top. And he knows how to collaborate, always finding a way to put politics aside and just get the job done.
In his farewell address last year, Cooper described why he loves North Carolina:
North Carolina is “where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great.”
It never ceases to amaze me that this line of poetry written about our state a hundred years ago could just as easily have been written yesterday to evoke the soul of North Carolina.
It’s a line that reminds us that wherever we are in life, we can and will get better. We’re never done with the work. That our people are North Carolina’s engine. That the choices we make today will impact not just our lives, but the generations to come.
Things are tough right now, but we can and will get better. Time to get back to work.
