COVID-19 tested every governor’s character. Roy Cooper failed North Carolina because he treated power as a substitute for the honest, dependable leadership North Carolinians needed.
The defining challenge was never whether the government should respond to a dangerous virus. It was whether leaders could protect lives without inflicting avoidable damage on families, livelihoods, and communities. Cooper chose delay and secrecy, exercised emergency powers for too long, and accepted too little accountability.
Cooper’s campaign is now spending heavily to define the record he wants Senate voters to remember. But North Carolinians lived through another part of that record themselves, and it deserves the same scrutiny. Now he wants voters to reward that record with a seat in the United States Senate.
When the pandemic began, I was serving as a presidential appointee at the Department of Homeland Security, where FEMA assumed the lead role in coordinating the overall federal response in March 2020. My job included establishing what the government knew, shaping how those facts reached the public, and coordinating DHS’s work with the White House. I was often in secure rooms with the DHS Secretary and other senior leaders as reports and intelligence arrived, giving me a direct view of the information shaping federal guidance to governors.
That experience made the stakes of state decisions impossible to ignore. Emergency orders determined whether a parent kept a paycheck, a child entered a classroom, or a small business survived. Authority with consequences that sweeping had to remain narrow, transparent, and constantly justified.
Cooper’s did not.
The Trump administration issued phased reopening guidelines in April 2020, and other states began lifting restrictions. South Carolina ended its work-or-home order in May. Florida removed statewide business capacity restrictions in September. North Carolina, meanwhile, kept capacity, gathering, and distancing rules until May 14, 2021, 231 days after Florida.
Cooper insisted politics had no place in reopening decisions, yet he vetoed Republican-led efforts to move faster while workers and small businesses absorbed the cost of every additional delay. By the time Cooper acted, more than 13,000 North Carolina businesses had permanently closed during the preceding year.
Children paid an even steeper price. Cooper closed classrooms and allowed districts to remain fully remote into 2021. After some students had been out for 11 months, he vetoed a classroom-option bill backed by both Republicans and Democrats, then signed a compromise as bipartisan pressure grew. From 2019 to 2022, North Carolina’s NAEP reading and math scores fell five to ten points across fourth and eighth grades.
State health officials also reported a 70% increase in children discharged from emergency departments with behavioral-health conditions, while suicides among 10- to 18-year-olds rose from 47 in 2019 to 67 in 2020. Those numbers do not prove school closures caused every tragedy, but they show that keeping children home carried dangers Cooper failed to weigh with the same urgency as the virus.
The broader consequences were severe. Overdose deaths rose 40% in 2020, compared with roughly 30% nationally. Roughly 565,000 payroll jobs disappeared in two months. A state audit later found that the Division of Employment Security failed to issue $438 million in initial unemployment payments on time or adequately prepare for a sharp downturn.
Cooper’s government could close a business and take away a paycheck, yet it could not reliably deliver the unemployment payment it owed when rent came due.
The double standard became visible elsewhere. Cooper marched outside the Executive Mansion with protesters, his fist raised and his mask hanging from one ear, even as his administration urged distancing and generally limited outdoor gatherings to 25 people. His order exempted First Amendment activity, but the contrast was still hard to miss: Sacrifice was mandatory for the public, but apparently optional for the governor.
His administration also withheld the names of nursing homes experiencing outbreaks until AARP applied pressure and a coalition of news organizations threatened legal action. Cooper then maintained his emergency declaration for 888 days and vetoed legislation requiring Council of State and legislative approval beyond seven and 45 days, respectively. He dismissed those checks as “bureaucracy and politics.”
The courts eventually supplied some of the scrutiny Cooper resisted. A unanimous appeals panel found no scientific evidence in the record showing that standalone bars posed a greater risk than bars in other establishments. In 2025, the state Supreme Court allowed the bar owners’ central constitutional claim to continue and warned that North Carolinians had rejected “because I said so” governance long ago.
Cooper invoked science as a shield, but saying the word did not make every distinction scientific.
His administration’s COVID record also touched public safety. Cooper has defended that record by noting that his administration initially fought broader prisoner releases and that the eventual agreement arose from litigation. But governors are ultimately judged by the agreements their administrations enter and the consequences that follow. The state ultimately agreed to move 3,500 offenders out of prison ahead of schedule. Of 1,180 settlement releases covered by a state study, 48% were rearrested within two years, compared with 44% of all fiscal-year 2021 prison releases. One offender released more than three months early, Edward L. King Jr., attempted to rape a child under 13 just 36 days later, while he otherwise would have remained incarcerated.
COVID-19 demanded difficult decisions from every governor. Mistakes were inevitable. What mattered was whether leaders adjusted, explained themselves, and accepted responsibility for the consequences.
I watched governors, nurses, paramedics, and law enforcement officers lead the nation through the most sweeping crisis since 9/11 with courage and accountability. Their example revealed what Cooper’s record lacked: the humility to change course and the willingness to answer for every decision.
THE REAL BACK-TO-SCHOOL VACCINE QUESTION ISN’T ABOUT SCIENCE — IT’S ABOUT CONTROL
Cooper can campaign on the parts of his record he wants voters to remember. North Carolinians are entitled to remember the rest.
He signed the orders. North Carolinians absorbed the consequences. They do not owe him a promotion.
Colton Overcash is the founder of Vertex Strategies, a Charlotte-based government relations and strategic advisory firm with a presence in Washington, D.C. He regularly writes and comments on technology, public safety, and national security. He previously held two presidential appointments at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration and served on the staffs of U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis and U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx.