After 4 years, how well did North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper live up to candidate Roy Cooper’s promises?

Early in Governor Roy Cooper’s term, Carolina repealed House Bill 2, the notorious law that restricted transgender access to public bathrooms and blocked local nondiscrimination ordinances. Cooper is candidate again, running for re-election after a four-year term marked by power struggles with the General Assembly’s Republican majority. Cooper also signed a transportation bond into law, as he promised on the campaign trail.

But some campaign promises simply fell by the wayside. Others broke on the rocks of the legislature’s GOP majority as Cooper went back and forth with lawmakers who had moved to limit his power before he even took office. Medicaid expansion never had enough momentum to pass, at least in the Senate, despite a multi-year fight that blocked passage of a full state budget.

Teacher pay has increased, but it is Republicans who drove that bus, and the raises have not been as high as Cooper pressed for. Repeated budget vetoes mean the governor vetoed raises too, and Republicans will make sure voters hear about it heading into the November 3rd 2020 elections. Not all failures are a governor’s fault, neither are all successes, and not all promises carry equal weight.

A lot of what Cooper did was give measured promises about how he could push the conversation.

Representitive Robert Reives was incredibly pleased with Cooper. With Republicans holding a super-majority in the legislature for the first half of his term, Cooper played defense. The second half was defined by crisis response. Hurricane Florence flooded eastern North Carolina in 2018. And, now, a global pandemic. Throughout the four years, Cooper’s approval ratings have been the strongest of any political figure in Carolina, staying at or above the 50 percent mark for most of his term.

Cooper’s first term in office should be considered successful, given the circumstances he faced. Donald Bryson, president and chief executive of the right-leaning Civitas Institute, said Cooper’s rhetoric after four years stands remarkably close to where he was as a candidate. Unfortunately for North Carolinians, this has led to unreasonable positions and an ineffective relationship with the General Assembly.

The unwillingness to work across the aisle has been so ingrained in Cooper’s term that he has been unable to deliver on campaign promises and substantive change.

But Cooper shifted the conversation in North Carolina.

In 2016, lawmakers were not even talking about expanding Medicaid. Social issues often dominated the debate, and now there is little reason to bring those bills forward.