Op-ed: Sen. Phil Berger: Gov. Roy Cooper’s real resume
Gov. Roy Cooper as a vice-presidential pick? To the casual outside observer, Gov. Cooper is a mild-mannered, moderate-sounding politician who has spent decades in office. But strip away the veneer and you see a left-wing politician following the Biden-Harris administration’s left-wing, progressive playbook to a T.
Gov. Cooper spent his last four years intent on garnering the attention of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the national media. What’s missing in all the current hoopla is any consideration of his actual policy preferences and how, if he had been left unchecked, Gov. Cooper would have transformed North Carolina into just another failed blue state.
You see, from his first day in office, Gov. Cooper fought the Republican-led General Assembly’s policies that have made North Carolina one of the best states in the nation in which to live and work. He’s vetoed income tax cuts for all North Carolinians, expansion of the zero-tax bracket, and efforts to cut bureaucratic red tape. And when national praise for North Carolina’s standing as a low-tax, business-friendly state came rolling in, he took a victory lap.
Public education has been the focus of Gov. Cooper’s final term, but his record puts students and parents last. He shut down our schools and vetoed legislation to restart in-person learning safely. When Republicans expanded our wildly successful Opportunity Scholarship program, which provides families in North Carolina with a scholarship to attend the school that best fits their child’s educational needs, he created a fictional “state of emergency” purely for the purpose of traveling across the state to rail against school choice initiatives and parental rights in education. He vetoed teacher pay raises and increases in public education funding. If he had his way, schools would keep secrets from parents, men would play in women’s sports, and inappropriate topics like sexuality would be mandatory in our K-4 classrooms.
Gov. Cooper has fought commonsense election integrity measures, going as far as to sue to keep full partisan control over North Carolina’s election administration. Not surprisingly, under his partisan control, multiple Democratic members have resigned in disgrace and the board has denied ballot access to third parties seen as competition for Democrats. Gov. Cooper vetoed legislation to implement photo voter ID, require mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day, and prohibit private money from funding election administration.
One of his worst offenses has been his administration’s response following catastrophic natural disasters. The Cooper administration has left thousands of families in the lurch, with many still waiting for their homes to be repaired or rebuilt from hurricanes that hit as far back as 2016. Notwithstanding the failure, Gov. Cooper thinks that “overall, the recovery in the state has been successful.” Only in a left-wing government would waiting more than half a decade to return home be considered a success.
In North Carolina, we have a long history with so-called moderate Democrats. For over a century, Democrats ran the legislative and executive branches almost exclusively. I saw the disastrous impacts of their policies on North Carolina firsthand.
When Republicans earned the majority in the General Assembly in 2010, we inherited a mess — one that Gov. Cooper and his Democratic colleagues created. We had a multi-billion-dollar budget deficit.
We were billions in debt to the federal government. And our state’s savings account was depleted following years of irresponsible budgeting.
Luckily, we’ve been able to change course and get North Carolina back on the right track. We were the back-to-back best state for business, have a balanced budget, healthy state reserves, a strong economy, and are recognized nationally for our tax policy. That hard work has been done despite Gov. Cooper, not because of him.
Gov. Cooper has done a good job of marketing himself to North Carolinians as a moderate, but that’s not what voters are getting.
The governor North Carolina has known for the past eight years wants the government to choose where kids go to school, not parents.
He is not interested in election integrity and he sidesteps democracy when it helps his party.
He thwarts efforts to lower taxes and vetoes legislation to deport dangerous illegal immigrants.
He’s been sued by churches for restricting religious worship, sued by small business owners for tramping on their ability to do business, and stood in the way of reliable energy expansion.
Roy Cooper looks good on paper because the Republican-led General Assembly did much of the work for him. Don’t let glowing media coverage fool you. He’s just your average liberal Democratic governor looking to have a breakout moment on the national stage.
Phil Berger is the president pro tempore in the North Carolina Senate.
