Roy Cooper

On March 10, 2020 Cooper declared a state of emergency in North Carolina due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Four days later, Cooper issued an executive order banning gatherings of over one hundred people, and closed all K-12 schools for two weeks, across the state of North Carolina.

On December 5, 2019, Cooper officially announced his run for re-election to a second term.

Cooper was elected by his fellow Appalachian governors as co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission for 2019, making him the first North Carolina governor to co-chair the ARC since Jim Hunt in 1978. In the November 2018 elections, the Republican Party lost seats in the General Assembly, ending its supermajorities in both houses and rendering it unable to override gubernatorial vetoes. On March 6, 2019, Cooper proposed a $25.2 billion budget for the year. It included salary increases for public school teachers and state workers, expansion of Medicaid, and a $3.9 billion bond (subject to a referendum) to help fund school construction and local infrastructure projects. Cooper stated that he was confident he could get the legislature, without enough Republican members to override a veto, to implement some of his ideas.

In May 2019, Cooper vetoed a bill that proposed punishments in the form of prison time and fines against physicians and nurses who do not resuscitate newborns that survive an abortion. Cooper stated that the "bill is an unnecessary interference between doctors and their patients" and that laws "already protect newborn babies."

In December 2018, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill that would require new primary elections if a do-over election was called in the 9th district election. Cooper vetoed the bill due to a provision that made campaign finance investigations less public, but the General Assembly overrode his veto.

He defeated Republican incumbent Pat McCrory for the governorship in a close race in the 2016 election. On December 5, McCrory conceded the election, making Cooper the first challenger since 1850 to defeat a sitting North Carolina Governor. Cooper took office on January 1, 2017. The Republican-dominated legislature passed bills in a special session before he took office to reduce the power of the governor's office. The legislature has overridden several of his vetoes of legislation.

Dismayed by Cooper's win, the General Assembly passed special legislation before he was inaugurated to reduce the power of the governor's office. In what The New York Times described as a "surprise special session", Republican legislators moved to strip away Cooper's powers before he would assume the governorship on January 1, 2017. Throughout the month of December, Cooper oversaw an attempt to repeal the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act. The repeal attempt failed as a deal between state Republican and Democratic lawmakers and Charlotte officials fell apart.

After taking office, as of January 6, 2017, Cooper requested federal approval for Medicaid coverage expansion in North Carolina. Effective January 15, however, a federal judge halted Cooper's request, an order that expired on January 29. In his first months in office Cooper focused on repealing the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act. After long negotiations with Republican state legislators, in late March Cooper agreed to sign a law that prohibited North Carolina cities from passing local ordinances pertaining to public accommodations or employment practices for three years in exchange for the reversal of the facilities act. On May 9, 2017, President Donald Trump appointed Cooper to a commission tasked with reducing opioid addiction.

After the Supreme Court of the United States declared North Carolina's legislative maps to be unconstitutional, Cooper called for a special redistricting session on June 7, 2017. However, the House and Senate cancelled the session, calling it "unconstitutional". On June 29, Cooper signed the STOP Act, an overhaul of the prescribing and dispensing regulations of opioids.

On July 26, 2017, Cooper signed a bill to mount cameras on school buses in order to reduce drivers who illegally pass stopped school buses. On August 31, 2017, he declared a state of emergency due to plummeting gas supply, which was rescinded on September 18.

Cooper's first veto as North Carolina Governor was of a bill that would make elections to the North Carolina Superior Court and to the District Court partisan again, after being conducted on a nonpartisan basis for many years. The state House voted to override the veto on March 22, 2017. The state Senate followed suit on March 23, which resulted in the bill becoming law over the Governor's objections.

Cooper vetoed a bill on April 21, 2017, to reduce the size of the North Carolina Court of Appeals by three judges. The veto was overridden on April 26. He also vetoed a bill on April 21, 2017, that would create a new State Board of Elections (and new county boards of elections) split evenly between the Republicans and the Democrats. It would replace the longstanding system that gave the party of the Governor of North Carolina a majority on the board. Both houses of the legislature voted to override the veto on April 24 and 25.

In July 2017, Cooper vetoed a bill to authorize nonprofit organizations to operate "game nights", saying it would unintentionally create a new opportunity for the video poker industry.

Cooper ran for Governor of North Carolina in the 2016 election against incumbent Republican Pat McCrory. In March 2016, the North Carolina General Assembly passed the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act—commonly known as "House Bill 2"—which McCrory signed into law. Numerous corporations began boycotting the state in protest of the law, cancelling job investment and expansion plans. Cooper denounced the law as unconstitutional and refused to defend it in court in his capacity as attorney general.

Cooper argued his first case before the United States Supreme Court, J. D. B. v. North Carolina, in 2011, a case related to Miranda rights in juvenile cases. The Court ruled 5–4 against North Carolina.

Both state and national Democrats attempted to recruit him to run against Republican US Senator Richard Burr in 2010, but he declined. In 2012 politicians suggested him as a possible candidate for Governor of North Carolina after incumbent Governor Bev Perdue announced her retirement, but Cooper declined to run. His political consultant announced in 2011 that Cooper would seek a fourth term in 2012. He was unopposed in both the Democratic primary and the general election. In the November 2012 elections, Cooper received 2,828,941 votes.

Following a decision in 2010 by a three-judge panel to exonerate Gregor Taylor, who had served nearly seventeen years for the first-degree murder of Jaquetta Thomas, Cooper ordered an audit after it was learned that officials at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation forensic lab had withheld information. This suppression of evidence had contributed to Taylor's conviction for murder. The audit was released in 2010; it found that it had been common practice for two decades for a select group of agents within the State Bureau of Investigation to withhold information. In addition, they did not keep up with scientific standards and the latest tests. The two investigators, Chris Swecker and Micheal Fox, cited almost 230 cases that were tainted by these actions. Three persons convicted in such cases had been executed; 80 defendants convicted were still serving time in prison. A massive state effort was undertaken to follow up on their cases.

In January 2007, when Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong asked to be recused from dealing with the Duke lacrosse case, Attorney General Cooper's office assumed responsibility for the case. On April 11, 2007, Cooper dismissed the case against the Duke lacrosse team players, declaring them "innocent" and victims of a "tragic rush to accuse". The decision won him bipartisan praise. Two days after the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, he created the Campus Safety Task Force to analyze school shootings and make policy recommendations to help the government prevent and respond to them. The committee delivered its report to him in January 2008. Following the release of the task force's findings, Cooper assisted members of the North Carolina General Assembly in passing a law which required court clerks to record involuntary commitments in a national gun permit database.

Cooper was elected North Carolina Attorney General in November 2000 and took office on January 6, 2001; he was re-elected for a second four-year term in 2004. Cooper was mentioned as a possible Democratic candidate for North Carolina governor in 2008, but he decided to run for re-election as Attorney General instead. He was easily re-elected, defeating Republican Bob Crumley and garnering more votes than any other statewide candidate in the 2008 Attorney General election.

After practicing law with his family's law firm for a number of years, Cooper was elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1986. He was appointed to the North Carolina Senate in 1991 to fill a remaining term of a seat that was vacated. In 1997, he was elected as Democratic Majority Leader of the state Senate. He continued to practice law as the managing partner of the law firm Fields & Cooper in Rocky Mount and Nashville, North Carolina.

Roy Asberry Cooper III (born June 13, 1957) is an American politician and attorney who has served as the 75th Governor of North Carolina since January 1, 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Cooper had previously served as the elected Attorney General of North Carolina since 2001. Prior to that, he served in the General Assembly in both the North Carolina House of Representatives and the North Carolina Senate.

Roy Asberry Cooper III was born on June 13, 1957 in Nashville, North Carolina to Beverly Batchelor and Roy Asberry Cooper II. His mother was a teacher and his father was a lawyer. He attended public school and worked on his parents' tobacco farm during summer. He graduated from Northern Nash Senior High School in 1975. He received the Morehead Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergraduate studies. He was elected as the president of the university's Young Democrats. He also earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1982.