Democrats can win “if we look for people that exude confidence and trust and a work ethic—I know that sounds trite, but it really is true,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper tells The Atlantic. “Trying to convince somebody like that to get into the political arena these days is harder and harder because of what you have to put up with.”
It sounds like bland advice but it works for the understated Cooper, writes Edward-Isaac Dovere. Cooper keeps winning elections in a state not quite ready to turn blue. He is “16–0 in primary and general elections over the past three and a half decades,” Dovere reminds readers:
“I wish there was a secret that I could tell you,” he told me a few weeks ago on a Zoom call from the governor’s mansion. “I’m not sure that there is. If I had the secret, I’d be out there holding seminars.”
“People do tell me that they don’t agree with me quite a bit of [the time], but they think I’m coming at it in the right way,” Cooper adds. “They believe I’m doing what I think is right, and that matters to them.” Cooper’s low-volume pandemic briefings avoided drama or conflicts with the Trump administration.
Even people who were not voting for him thought he is doing a good job, “fighting for the right things and had the right priorities,” said Marshall Cohen, political director of the Democratic Governor’s Association.
I had not considered how the pandemic might add to Democrat’s brand here with a Republican-controlled legislature. But this leaped off the page:
Cooper told me he sees his second term as offering “opportunity in crisis.” He’s long wanted to expand rural broadband; now, with voters relying more on remote learning and telehealth, public support might be on his side. The same goes for expanding workforce training and health-care coverage: With the pandemic leading to significant job losses—and the loss of employer-sponsored insurance coverage—he thinks he has a bigger opening to expand state efforts than he did during his first term.
That is if Republicans will let him. Expanding rural broadband with state support has long been held up by Republicans’ fetish for private-sector solutions and cosiness with corporate donors. Yet it is a constant “want” for rural residents in the reddest parts of this state and probably others.* Moving beyond talk to achieving that would materially improve lives out where voters spurn Democratic candidates. It could improve Democrats’s chances of retaking control of state legislatures.
It’s not sexy for a lot of progressives, but it counts.
*I was on a Zoom call the other night in which rural organizers complained their limited connections meant they had to run audio only.