Summary
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina has won his party’s primary and will face Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest in the November general election as he seeks a second term.
The two will face off for the state’s highest office later this year.
It’s a race that Forest has long been preparing for. Cooper enters that match up flush with cash and hoping his reelection could help Democrats take back one or both General Assembly chambers.
Source: WCNC
OnAir Post: 2020 NC Governor Race
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Source: WCNC
Cooper defeated primary challenger Ernest Reeves, who ran a low-key campaign and reported raising little money.
Forest beat state Rep. Holly Grange, benefiting from a statewide campaign network that he began forming after his first lieutenant governor’s victory in 2012. He was reelected in 2016.
Cooper had 87% of the vote Tuesday, or over a million of the ballot. Reeves finished with 13% of the vote.
ELECTIONS
Roy Cooper, Dan Forest win primaries for NC governor
The two will face off for the state’s highest office later this year.
Author: Associated Press, WCNC Staff
Published: 7:24 PM EST March 3, 2020
Updated: 6:21 AM EST March 4, 2020
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina has won his party’s primary and will face Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest in the November general election as he seeks a second term.
The two will face off for the state’s highest office later this year.
It’s a race that Forest has long been preparing for. Cooper enters that match up flush with cash and hoping his reelection could help Democrats take back one or both General Assembly chambers.
Cooper defeated primary challenger Ernest Reeves, who ran a low-key campaign and reported raising little money.
Forest beat state Rep. Holly Grange, benefiting from a statewide campaign network that he began forming after his first lieutenant governor’s victory in 2012. He was reelected in 2016.
Cooper had 87% of the vote Tuesday, or over a million of the ballot. Reeves finished with 13% of the vote.
Cooper was first elected governor of North Carolina in November 2016, before that he served as North Carolina Attorney General for several years and spent time over a decade in the North Carolina House of Representatives.
Cooper defeated former Governor and Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory in 2016. Many political servers say McCrory lost to Cooper because of McCrory’s support for the I-77 toll project.
Forst finished with 89%, or 694,929 votes, against Grange’s 11% of the vote, or about 86,181.
Issues
Civil Rights
Roy Cooper
N/A
Dan Forest
Dan Forest believes the Second Amendment secures all the rights enshrined in our Constitution. He stands with the North Carolina counties that are affirming our right to keep and bear arms.
When he is Governor, this right will never be in jeopardy in our state.
Dan Forest is proudly endorsed by:
- NRA
- Gun Owners of America
- Grassroots North Carolina
Dan Forest believes that the First Amendment protections of speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition are key to making America great.
He championed a law that extends this commitment to college campuses in our state, ensuring that all students are free to speak their minds without fear of violence or retribution.
Economy
Roy Cooper
Building an Economy that Works for Everyone
North Carolina succeeds by creating good-paying jobs that put more money in the pockets of hardworking North Carolinians. Under Governor Cooper’s leadership, North Carolina announced more than 60,000 new jobs for both urban and rural parts of our state
North Carolina is home to more than 800,000 small businesses and Governor Cooper is committed to helping them thrive. He has proposed help for small businesses with early-stage technology development and grant funding to help small- and mid-sized communities transition into an innovation-based economy.
To bring opportunity to struggling areas, he has proposed the Rural Investments Strengthening Economies (RISE) Program to revitalize communities and encourage companies to locate or expand in North Carolina’s 80 rural counties. In addition, he is pushing for expanded broadband access, which is key to small business success in rural areas. Governor Cooper knows that we must focus on making North Carolina’s economy work for everyone, not just those at the top. His administration focuses on putting more money in the pockets of working families by strengthening existing companies, recruiting new businesses, and helping small businesses start up and grow.
Making North Carolina Job Ready
Workforce development is a primary focus for Governor Cooper as he seeks to ensure more North Carolinians are ready for the jobs of today and tomorrow.
Governor Cooper’s NC Job Ready initiative is helping people get good-paying jobs to support themselves and their families by investing in workforce development and job training. NC Job Ready helps connect workers with job training and employers with the skilled workers they need to grow and succeed.
To help people complete the training they need to get good jobs, Governor Cooper created the Finish Line Grants program. The program helps community college students who face unforeseen financial emergencies like medical bills, car repairs and childcare costs stay in school. Already, more than 3,000 Finish Line Grants have helped students stay on track to getting a good-paying job. Governor Cooper wants to expand the program to students at all colleges in North Carolina.
Gov. Cooper and other North Carolina leaders are committed to the My Future NC goal of ensuring that 2 million working-age North Carolinians have a degree or credential beyond high school by 2030. To get there, he proposed NC GROW (Getting Ready for Opportunities in the Workforce) a scholarship and aid program to help people get community college degrees and job training. NC GROW would cover last-dollar tuition and fees for North Carolina community college students enrolled in high-demand fields like construction, information technology, and electrical line work. The program would also provide up to $1,000 per community college student to pursue non-credit, short-term workforce credentials for jobs in these fields.
Dan Forest
As Governor, Dan Forest will rebuild our economy, retrain our workforce for the new economy, launch an aggressive apprenticeship initiative, recruit high-paying industries to North Carolina, and put our people back to work.
With more than 1 million North Carolinians out of a job, we need to quickly get our state back to work and repair the damage to our economy. Every hard-working North Carolinian that wants a good job should be able to find one. Repairing livelihoods is critical to the health of our state.
We need to make sure that all parts of our state have the infrastructure needed to land job opportunities and that people have the training and skills needed to fill them. North Carolina needs a long-term vision to move forward, a plan to achieve this vision, and a new team of leaders to make it happen.
Education
Roy Cooper
Building a Strong Foundation for North Carolina’s Children
The foundation for future learning, health, and well-being is built during early childhood. Governor Cooper wants all North Carolina children to get off to a strong start in safe and nurturing families and communities, with access to high-quality opportunities to learn and thrive. When we give children a fair chance for a strong foundation in their first years of life, we give them a better future and create healthier and more vibrant communities for all of us.
The NC Early Childhood Action Plan released on February 27, 2019 and created at Governor Cooper’s direction lays out a bold vision and roadmap for how the state can create better futures for our young children by 2025. Governor Cooper’s budget makes critical investments toward achieving these goals to ensure North Carolina’s children are healthy, safe and nurtured, and ready to succeed, including increased investment in Smart Start and NC Pre-K.
Investing in Our Future
Governor Cooper is working to strengthen our education system from early childhood through postsecondary education and make the investments necessary to ensure that all North Carolina students have access to a high-quality public education. He has proposed solutions to keep our public schools strong and make North Carolina a Top Ten Educated State by 2025.
A quality teacher in every classroom and a quality principal in every school make for great public schools – and our children deserve nothing less.
In his latest budget, Governor Cooper proposed an average 9.1% teacher pay raise over the next two years, with every teacher receiving at least a 3% raise each year, to get North Carolina on track to best in the Southeast for teacher pay by 2023.
It’s been over 20 years since North Carolina passed a school construction bond, and the Governor’s proposed budget supports a $3.9 billion bond to build and renovate public schools and meet other key infrastructure needs.
In recent years, too many tragedies have taken place at our nation’s schools. Governor Cooper is committed to keeping students and schools safe. He has proposed more funding to update school facilities, hire more nurses, counselors, and mental health professionals in schools, and increase funding for school resource officers, along with common sense gun legislation.
For decades, North Carolina’s world-class community colleges and universities have had a reputation for excellence. Governor Cooper is committed to maintaining that reputation with continued investments and ongoing support.
Dan Forest
For too long, our education system has prioritized the system over the student. Parents know their children better than the government and they know what type of education is best for them. Every child deserves an excellent education regardless of what ZIP code they live in.
Using technology, our schools need to move toward mastery-based learning where students are equipped with customized curriculum and are allowed to move faster or slower depending on their learning style and ability.
Right now, our schools must be open. Virtual school plans don’t work for parents with jobs. As Governor, I will ensure every family has the option to send their child to the classroom full-time.
Our schools also must be secured. Today, roughly half of North Carolina schools are without school resource officers. As Governor, I will put an armed security officer in every school.
Dan Forest has championed higher teacher pay since elected. The Republican General Assembly has done a great job providing raises over the past six years and will continue to do so. No other state in the country has addressed teacher pay six years in a row. Average teacher pay in NC is now $58,000 and the average compensation is $78,000. Another pay raise was in the budget that the Governor wouldn’t sign.
Environment
Roy Cooper
Protecting our Environment
Protecting our state’s natural resources is critical for our families and our economy. North Carolina is a proud leader in renewable energy. We are second in the nation in solar energy, creating thousands of jobs and reducing harmful emissions. Governor Cooper supports continued investments in renewable energy that advance our economy and help our environment.
Governor Cooper is also leading the fight to protect North Carolina’s coast from offshore drilling. Offshore drilling threatens North Carolina’s $3 billion coastal tourism industry and could cost the commercial and recreational fishing communities hundreds of millions of dollars. Governor Cooper is working across party lines with other state and local leaders to stand up to the federal government and say, “not off our coast.”
To ensure North Carolina’s commitment to fight climate change and lead North Carolina’s transition to a clean energy economy, Governor Roy Cooper issued Executive Order No. 80. The executive order calls for the State of North Carolina to protect North Carolina’s environment while growing clean energy technologies.
Every family in North Carolina deserves access to clean drinking water and air. Governor Cooper is pushing to ensure that North Carolina has the resources we need to keep our environment safe and hold polluters accountable. His budget invests in more resources to analyze pollutants, encourage clean energy, and protect waterways and green space.
Dan Forest
N/A
Health Care
Roy Cooper
A Healthier North Carolina
Governor Cooper is working to help North Carolinians live healthier, more abundant and purposeful lives. His experience helping write and pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) showed the importance of getting coverage to keep families healthy. Governor Cooper is leading the charge to close the health care coverage gap by expanding access to Medicaid. This would cover over 500,000 North Carolinians, bring more than $4 billion into our economy, create 40,000 new jobs, and help control private insurance premiums, which are benefits a majority of other states are getting from expanding Medicaid.
Expanding access to health care would also combat the drug use crisis plaguing our communities. Governor Cooper put in place North Carolina’s first opioid action plan, served on the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, and signed the STOP Act to stop over prescription of highly addictive drugs.
Dan Forest
As Governor, Dan Forest will focus on providing better healthcare access for patients by incentivizing doctors to practice in our rural communities. He’ll work with the General Assembly and the State Treasurer to ensure more price transparency so citizens know how much prescription drugs and vital health services cost. And he’ll fight to get those left in the coverage gap created by the Affordable Care Act on affordable private insurance.
Immigration
Roy Cooper
N/A
Dan Forest
There is a distinct difference between immigration and illegal immigration. We need a system in place that makes it easier for legal immigrants, and businesses in need of workers, to navigate a guest worker program. A nation that can’t protect its borders isn’t much of a nation at all. In North Carolina, a handful of Democrat sheriffs are allowing dangerous, criminal, unlawful illegal aliens to be released back into our communities — putting our families in danger.
As Governor, Dan Forest will uphold the law and work with our law enforcement to keep you and your family safe.
Infrastructure
Roy Cooper
Building Infrastructure for the 21st Century
As our state and economy continue to grow, North Carolina’s families and businesses need roads, bridges, and technology infrastructure to keep thriving. Governor Cooper is working with state and local leaders to address our state’s infrastructure needs.
Governor Cooper and his Department of Transportation successfully passed the Build NC Bond Act with support from Democrats and Republicans. This law will help expedite critical highway projects, improving the everyday lives of people all over the state and encouraging businesses to grow and locate in North Carolina.
Governor Cooper also knows that access to broadband is a must for economic success in our rural communities and across the state. He proposed funding to improve internet access and service to households and businesses in underserved areas of North Carolina, including a grant program to help local governments partnering with private providers and utility cooperatives complete ‘last mile’ broadband projects.
Dan Forest
N/A
Safety
Roy Cooper
Recovering When Natural Disasters Strike
Help can never arrive soon enough to those affected by disasters. And, unfortunately, North Carolina is no stranger to natural disasters. Whether the harm comes from tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires or other disasters, Governor Cooper is committed to ensuring that North Carolinians get the help they need after disaster strikes.
In recent years, North Carolina has been hit especially hard, with Hurricanes Florence, Matthew and Michael causing billions of dollars in damage. But North Carolina is stronger than any storm, and Governor Cooper’s administration is working with federal, state and local partners to rebuild.
North Carolinians have gotten more than $1 billion in help recovering with more on the way to continue making families and communities whole. North Carolina has seen progress as families have returned home, roads and bridges have been repaired and businesses have reopened, but more work remains to rebuild resilient communities.
To ensure North Carolina is prepared for future hurricanes, the Administration has focused on flood mapping key areas and moving and elevating homes that are at risk in future storms. Governor Cooper has created a new agency, the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resilience, to help our state rebuild stronger and smarter. He’s requested billions of dollars in additional help recovering from Hurricane Florence, and he also wants to invest to prepare for future disasters.
Dan Forest
The government’s first priority should be the security of the people. We are watching murder rates climb in our major metropolitan areas. We must keep violent criminals off our streets and behind bars where they belong.
Local sheriffs should be cooperating with federal agencies like ICE to keep violent, illegal criminals from being arbitrarily released back into our communities.
Recently, our state has been hit by riots in our urban areas. Our police officers need to be able to do their jobs and protect vulnerable citizens and neighborhoods. When these acts of violence happen, it is always the low-income neighborhoods that suffer the most. As Governor, I will not hesitate to activate the National Guard to protect lives, livelihoods, and communities.
Dan Forest is a leader in our state’s fight against human trafficking. As Lt. Governor, he championed legislation that protects vulnerable women and children and gives harsher penalties to those guilty of engaging in human trafficking. This legislation:
- Quadrupled jail time for convicted traffickers.
- Provided training to health care workers to identify victims.
- Expanded the jurisdiction of the SBI in trafficking cases.
- Required the posting of human trafficking awareness signs in public places to display the national hotline.
As Governor, Dan will continue to build on these achievements to ensure our women and children are kept safe.
Seniors
Roy Cooper
N/A
Dan Cooper
Protect the Elderly in Nursing Homes
North Carolina’s nursing home residents make up less than 1% of our state’s population, but more than 50% of the deaths from COVID-19. This simply didn’t have to happen. While other states took extraordinary steps to help this vulnerable population, Gov. Cooper did nothing to protect them. As Governor, Dan Forest will put the health and safety of our most vulnerable first. Instead of rushing to close bars, gyms, and restaurants, he put our efforts where they will matter most.
