Is This Democrat Too Good for His Own Good?

Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee in the crucial and closely watched Senate race in North Carolina, isn't just a fierce candidate. He's a fascinating contradiction. His enormous strength is his greatest weakness. And his campaign aides fret not that the water is choppy but that the sailing's too smooth. Just about everyone I talk to in the state — political science professors, political operatives, neighbors on my street, acquaintances at my gym — assumes Cooper will win. He has the biography, the bona fides: worked on his family's North Carolina farm as a boy; attended college and law school here; served four terms as the state's attorney general; served another two as governor, demonstrating his crossover appeal by being elected to that post in years (2016 and 2020) when North Carolinians delivered their votes for president to Donald Trump. Yes, that's a heap of time on the inside for a moment that favors outsiders, and it's perhaps too much politicking in an impolitic age. But Cooper doesn't come across as entitled, assumptive, out of touch. For all his years in the state capital, you can still hear rural North Carolina in his voice. He looks more comfortable in shirts with the insignia of his beloved Carolina Hurricanes — he's a hockey nut whose ecstasy over the team's Stanley Cup victory this year was palpable — than in black tie. And just as Republicans can't tag him as a snooty elitist, they can't slam him, at least not credibly, as some lunatic lefty, though they're trying, with cynically selective ads about his criminal-justice record. Good luck. North Carolinians know him better than that and they know him as a moderate. They barely know his opponent, Michael Whatley, at all. Whatley has never run for political office before. He spent more than 15 years of his career as (ouch) a lobbyist. He occupied the position that brought him the most public exposure, chair of the Republican National Committee, during a span (March 2024 to August 2025) when that meant that he was more or less the political equivalent of one of the caddies who ooh over President Trump's golf strokes and guide him toward one of those miraculous scores. In no way whatsoever is Whatley some charismatic populist antonym to Cooper. And that's Cooper's problem. He and Whatley seem so mismatched — I haven't even mentioned the terrible midterm environment Trump has created for Republican candidates — that it's dangerously possible that many Democratic donors and North Carolina voters take Cooper's victory for granted and don't do what they should, which is pony up generously and cast ballots enthusiastically. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.