CHARLOTTE — After eight years as North Carolina’s chief executive, Gov. Roy Cooper is getting ready to say farewell to the office.
But his tenure saw pivotal moments in North Carolina’s recent history. Channel 9′s Joe Bruno sat down with the governor for one of his last interviews while in office.
Joe Bruno: Can’t believe eight years have flown by when you look at North Carolina, when you ran for governor in 2016 to now, when you’re getting ready to leave. What has changed? What have you learned?
Gov. Roy Cooper: Well, you know, when I took office in 2016, we had the dark shadow of the bathroom bill, House Bill 2, where companies were not coming to North Carolina and entertainment and sporting events were leaving.
But I got elected, we were able to get that legislation repealed, restore respect for our state. Businesses started coming back. We’re now the third-fastest growing state. We’ve netted a growth of 640,000 jobs over these last eight years.
We’ve been able to expand Medicaid, and we’ve got almost 600,000 people who are insured.
I think we’re on a trajectory of continuing to be the place that people want to be. We’ve become a clean energy epicenter in our in our business growth.
So I’m pleased with the progress that we’ve made. I’m so humbled and honored to have gotten a chance to lead the state that I love waking up every morning thinking about things that we can do to make things better for people’s lives.
My mission has been to have a North Carolina where people are better educated, where they’re healthier, where they have more money in their pockets, and they have opportunities to live lives of purpose and abundance, and everything our administration has done has tried to further that mission.
I think we’ve done them a lot to achieve a lot of those goals, and I’m just proud of our state and love living here, and will love continuing to live here.
Bruno: Let’s start with HB two. Do you think if that legislation was in place now, it would be harder for there to be a repeal?
Cooper: I don’t know. You know, things have changed in that vein, but I’ll tell you this, I know that we are a place where people want to be now, and I think it’s going to be important for us to continue to try to stay away from that culture war legislation, because there are a lot of people who are looking at, ‘Hey, where do I want to go to start a business?’ Where do I want to go to innovate?’ Those are the kinds of people that we want to attract in North Carolina, because they’re the ones that help us create the good paying jobs that help improve the lives of North Carolinians, and that’s going to be the constant push and pull, I think, in North Carolina over the next few years.
I think Governor-elect [Josh] Stein is going to continue a lot of the progress that we’ve made. He and I think a lot alike on many issues. He’s also going to blaze his own trails on issues that he feels strongly about, but I think that North Carolina will be in good hands. I think that there’s a lot to be hopeful about for our state, and I look forward to the future.
Bruno: The other major issue when you ran was the I 77 toll lane project. Obviously, it still exists. Are you disappointed that that project is still in place right now? I know you were critical of it when you first ran in 2016.
Cooper: Well, there have been some improvements made, but I know that funding transportation is one of the biggest challenges that we have in our state, particularly with the growth that we have. And it’s one of the reasons I’m really concerned that the legislature has continued to put in more and more tax breaks for the wealthy and for corporations. When we have the third-fastest growing state in the country, we have businesses coming here. We’ve got to be able to pay for our infrastructure. We’ve got to have more public transportation. We need to allow Charlotte to make the investments that they want to make --that the General Assembly is stopping them from making-- in order to grow in the right way. I think we’ve got to keep fighting for that autonomy, for Charlotte, and recognizing that if we’re going to keep up with the growth, we’ve got to make the investments in the infrastructure that we need.
Bruno: Have you been involved in those conversations at all? Do you think Charlotte has a shot at getting this, getting the permission to have this referendum?
Cooper: Well, you know, I think that we’re seeing too with Hurricane Helene, local governments need more autonomy. Local governments need more ability to be able to get the revenue that they need to make the improvements. Because, you know, we always talk about government closest to the people governs best. And I think that you’ll get a lot of support from both urban and rural cities and counties, and I hope that they continue to push this because, you know, our state constitution is different. The legislature has a lot of authority. We don’t have home rule like we do in some other states. So I think in order to be able to handle the growth, that’s a step that we need to take.
Bruno: Medicaid expansion. Tell me about how it progressed your negotiations each year, until we finally had it put in place last year.
Cooper: Well, a healthier North Carolina was one of my main missions. I knew that Medicaid expansion was a way to do it, because we had so many people who were making too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough money to qualify for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. These are working North Carolinians, many working for small businesses that couldn’t afford health insurance. They just simply couldn’t afford their health insurance. So when I took office, I said it’s important for us to do. I started work to expand and legislative leadership sued me in federal court to stop me, and just last year, those same legislative leaders came over here to the Executive Mansion, and we signed the Medicaid expansion bill that we asked them to sign. It took seven years. That was a long time. But in order to get this thing passed and to get past the Obamacare politics of it, we had to get Republican legislators’ own constituents to tell them how important this was. Rural North Carolinians had benefited the most from Medicaid expansion because they needed the health insurance. And so we had a lot of Republican rural county commissioners who would go into the legislature and say we don’t want our rural hospitals to close. They need to get paid for treating people. We can’t have so many indigent people going there. They need health insurance. So they said that.
We had some tough-on-crime Republican sheriffs who came and said, there’s so many people sitting in our jails who need health care and not handcuffs. Medicaid expansion can really help with that. We had businesses come to say, hey, you know, when medical providers can’t get recovery for the care they give they go to the private sector first, and that increases our insurance premiums more. So they lobbied the legislature for Medicare and Medicaid expansion. You know, we were turning down $521 million a month. And this is federal tax money that North Carolinians were already paying to Washington, allow it to come back, insure our working North Carolinians. You may not agree with how it happens, but health care is so complex, we have to make progress where we can make it, and this was a way for us to grab that help. We also got bonus money that we use to invest in mental health and addiction treatment, and then we’ve been able to follow up. We talked to so many people. Thank you for this health insurance that we have, but I’ve got a mountain of medical debt over here that’s keeping me from getting a credit card. It’s keeping me from being able to buy a home. Yeah. So we were able to leverage federal funding to get $4 billion of medical debt removed for two million North Carolinians. That process is happening now, on top of Medicaid expansion. So a lot of progress is being made.
Bruno: Was there and Oh, my God, this is going to pass moment like, when did you realize that you finally had a deal in place to get this accomplished?
Cooper: There was more. Oh, my God, this is not going to pass moments because we did everything we could. I vetoed budgets, we tried everything that we could along the way, and doors slammed in our faces. But I really didn’t have that, ‘Oh my God, this is going to pass’ until it finally did. Because, as you may recall, casinos got involved in this discussion at the very last minute, and I was thinking to myself, are casinos really going to kill Medicaid expansion? It didn’t happen, thank goodness, and we got it done. And I’m very grateful we were able to pull together in a bipartisan way. I’m grateful for legislators in both parties, grateful for the advocates who worked so hard.
(Part 2: Gov. Roy Cooper looks back on accomplishments over 8 years leading North Carolina)
Bruno: What was it like being Governor through COVID?
Cooper: You know, I’ve had a number of and the people of North Carolina have had historic challenges over the last eight years. The pandemic was one of them. This was something new for us off. You know, I had a long checklist of challenges I knew I was going to face as governor, pandemic wasn’t one of them. It was a learn as you go, and I think in North Carolina we approached this thing the right way. We listened to science, we listened to health professionals, but we also listened to businesses and how these issues were affecting them.
We ended up being one of the states in the country among the lowest death rates and job losses per capita, because I think we took reasonable approaches and did things the right way. Yeah, we learned a lot and health professionals and scientists learned a lot, but it’s one of those things where we found some good out of the bad. This greatly accelerated our new high-speed internet and connecting our state with it. We were investing with millions of dollars, now we’re going to have $2.5 billion in pandemic recovery money and the bipartisan Infrastructure Act to get every family, every business, every school connected in North Carolina to high-speed internet.
Bruno: Some businesses think the state reopened a little too slowly. How do you respond to that criticism?
Cooper: I think that the data shows that we did this right, that we wanted to protect people’s health, but we also wanted to make sure we prevented job losses as much as possible. And the data shows that both of those things were able to happen in North Carolina, I think too, that we’ve worked really hard to get our children caught back up. We know that this is an issue that we have to continue to fight every day. Investment in public schools is going to be so important for our future, and there’s a lot more we need to do there as well.
Bruno: The disaster that just happened in western North Carolina. How are you going to use the last few weeks of your time in office to help those in western North Carolina?
Cooper: Helene was the deadliest and most devastating storm Our state has ever faced. We lost 103 souls, $54 billion price tag on recovery. You compare that to North Carolina’s previous largest storm, Florence was a $17 billion so now we’re talking more than three times as much. A lot of progress has been made. Department of Transportation has been working really hard. We’ve opened more than 900 roads that had been closed. Just getting children back in school, power and communications back up, water systems and wastewater systems repaired, although a lot more work needs to be done. We realize also we’ve got 1000s of people who are in temporary sheltering in hotels and Airbnbs, but we know that it’s going to take billions to get western North Carolina up and running again. So I’ve taken a group of western leaders to Washington. We sat with President [Joe] Biden in the Oval Office, we met with federal agencies, we met with Democratic and Republican senators and members of Congress on Capitol Hill, they are now working on this week, we’ve asked for $25 billion it’s going to be critical for the feds to step up. Our state legislature needs to do better. We need to invest in small business recovery grants. We did it during the pandemic, the legislature thus far has refused to do it, so there’s a lot that we need to do. Housing is always a challenge, but this is one of the things that we’ve worked on, too. With transition to Governor-elect Stein’s administration, he’s already acknowledged this is going to be his number one challenge to make sure that Western North Carolina recovers. Look, I’m grateful for first responders, for all of the volunteers, for those local government officials who just all were there working so hard, North Carolina has got to come together to help western North Carolina recover. We want it to happen. So many of us have great memories of being in the mountains, but it’s also a critical economic driver for North Carolina. We’ve got to make sure we build back. We’ve got to build back stronger to get ready for the floods that are coming in the future.
Bruno: What is your advice to Governor-elect Josh Stein as he prepares to take office, especially with having so close to there being a super majority?
Cooper: Yeah, never ever give up on things you know are important. Just don’t stop there. There will be obstacles in your way, but don’t give up. Also, do your best to find common ground whenever you can.
You got to stick with your values. You got to stick with the things you believe in. But there are ways to try to craft solutions to everyday problems that that people face. And I would, I would tell him to do that, and I think, I think he will. He’s got the skills to do that. I’ve worked with him for 20 years, and know that he’s going to be a great governor.
Bruno: Last question, 2026 are you going to run for US Senate?
Cooper: So I’ve promised my wife and my family that I’m going to take some time to try to decide what it is that I want to do after this.
I love public service. I want to keep helping North Carolina and our country. I haven’t made that decision yet, but it’s on the table. Everything is on the table right now. Look, I haven’t driven in eight years, so I got to get ready to know how to drive my car again.
(VIDEO: Gov. Roy Cooper discusses progress in Helene recovery efforts)
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