Cooper Sounds Like Candidate At Speech to Journalists | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post is Barry Smith, who is an associate editor for the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

    Four-term AG says he'll keep traveling state but not ready to announce for governor

    CHAPEL HILL  -  N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper sounded much like a candidate for governor Monday morning when the four-term Democrat addressed the media at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

    Cooper has been a vocal critic of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and the GOP-dominated General Assembly, leading to speculation that he plans to launch a gubernatorial bid in 2016.

    "We now have a legislature that is controlled not just by the Republican Party but the extreme faction of the Republican Party as well as the governor's office, and that has caused damage to the state and has caused damage to our national brand," said Cooper. "That's caused damage to real people in North Carolina."

    Cooper offered a list of issues over the past 50 years that, he said, made North Carolina a "progressive beacon in the South." Those things included former Gov. Terry Sanford's call for racial tolerance, a nationally renowned university system, and the Smart Start early childhood program.

    He chided recently enacted tax cuts, calling them "tax giveaways for the top 1 percent," and blasted the General Assembly's decision to turn down an expansion of Medicaid as part of the Obama administration's health care reforms.

    Cooper said Republican governors in Arizona and Ohio decided to put policy over politics by accepting the Medicaid expansion.

    "I think you can't figure out any good reason policywise for not doing it," Cooper said of the rejection of Medicaid expansion. "The only thing that I can think of is, politically, it's somehow associated with the Affordable Care Act."

    He called on the General Assembly to come back during the 2014 short session and accept the federal Medicaid expansion, along with raising teacher pay.

    The N.C. Republican Party responded by saying that Cooper was using state time to campaign.

    "Obamacare supporter Roy Cooper is once again campaigning on the taxpayers' dime, this time regurgitating Democrat Party talking points and ignoring the fact that the Obama administration's plan to expand Medicaid would create a massive financial burden on our state," said Daniel Keylin, a spokesman for the state GOP, in a statement.

    Keylin said Cooper failed to mention that while the federal government offered to provide the vast majority of funding initially to expand Medicaid eligibility, the share of costs assumed by state taxpayers would grow over time.

    "Roy Cooper is not-so-subtly telling North Carolinians he wants to raise their taxes and cut essential services," Keylin said.

    While Cooper sounded like he was in the middle of a campaign for governor, he said it was too early to make a formal announcement.

    "I am deeply concerned about the direction of our state," Cooper said. "I'll be moving around the state and talking to people and making a formal announcement later."

    In addition to the three-plus terms Cooper has served as the state's attorney general, he was in the state House from 1987-91, and the Senate from 1991-2000.

    He has been considered a potential candidate for governor or U.S. Senate, but so far has chosen to seek re-election to his post as attorney general.

    Cooper spent some of his time during Monday's presentation before the journalists' roundtable talking about accomplishments at the Department of Justice. He said his office is pushing consumer issues, such as preventing people from getting ripped off by telemarketers, fighting higher utility rates, and improving the State Bureau of Investigation and the SBI crime lab.