‘Trump has created a cult,’ NC’s Cooper says in campaigning for Democratic governors

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper chairs the Democratic Governors Association and has been making the rounds promoting campaigns of Democratic candidates for governor. On Wednesday, he was interviewed by Pluribus News, a national legislative news site, and talked about what’s at stake for voters this election year.

He called former President Donald Trump’s Republican followers “a cult” and said the majority of the Republican Party supported “an autocracy.”

“I know that we’ve been pulled apart and that we are diametrically opposed and often closed-minded about these kinds of issues,” Cooper said during the interview, after talking about national issues including inflation.

“That’s what happens when you have a cult. There’s no question that Donald Trump has created a cult,” Cooper said.

“I do believe that there are enough people in this country who do understand that the majority of the Republican Party has decided that they are OK with an autocracy as long as their guy is in charge, and that protecting and preserving our democracy is crucial,” Cooper went on to say.

“There’s no better way to do that than through state government right now. Because as I mentioned before, the path to changing electors went through the states, and Democratic governors will stop those kinds of shenanigans,” he said.

After Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he continued to lie about the results, saying that he actually won. He did not. A violent mob of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the election of President Joe Biden, and the January 6th Committee hearings in Congress continue to investigate it.

The 2022 election is under additional scrutiny because of worries about the voting process and potential for candidates to try to overturn elections or undermine democracy.

In North Carolina, the race at the top of the ballot is for U.S. Senate. Republican Ted Budd is running against Democrat Cheri Beasley.

Jonathan Felts, senior advisor for Budd’s campaign, told The News & Observer on Thursday that it was “disappointing, but not surprising, that Governor Cooper would insult half his constituents and say they are members of a cult just because they disagree with his political worldview.” He referenced First Lady Kristin Cooper apologizing for “flipping off” Trump supporters in downtown Raleigh.

“If I were a cynical man, I might think he’s using that sort of extremist rhetoric in an effort to undermine citizens’ faith in the political system in preparation for his party experiencing record losses on Election Day,” Felts said.

A spokesperson for N.C. Senate leader Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, referenced Cooper’s executive orders and restrictions during the state of emergency declared during the coronavirus pandemic. Republican lawmakers passed bills opposing Cooper’s pandemic restrictions, but the governor vetoed them.

“It’s ironic that Gov. Cooper is concerned about an autocracy considering he exercised complete and singular control in North Carolina under his interpretation of the Emergency Management Act and endorsed a primary challenger because a sitting Democratic member of the legislature wasn’t sufficiently loyal to him,” Lauren Horsch, Berger’s spokesperson, said in a statement Thursday.

A spokesperson for the North Carolina Republican Party declined to comment on Cooper’s remarks.

Voting rights

Cooper told Pluribus News that Democratic governors will protect voting rights, and he said he’s working to prevent the North Carolina General Assembly from gaining Republican supermajorities in both chambers. The House and Senate already have Republican majorities, but not the three-fifths supermajorities required to override a gubernatorial veto of a bill.

The N&O recently asked Democratic and Republican legislative leaders about what they’d like to do in the next legislative session. Sen. Dan Blue, a Raleigh Democrat and the Senate minority leader, said that if his party made gains, his priority would be preserving “access to the ballot box.”

House Speaker Tim Moore, a Kings Mountain Republican running for reelection unopposed, told The N&O he wants to make it easier to vote but harder to cheat. He also supports voter ID.

“I think we should honor what the citizens of the state went to the polls and voted on, which was to put in place photo ID for voting,” he said. Moore said he also has concerns about same-day voter registration.

North Carolina allows registration and voting on the same day at early voting sites, although not on Election Day. Republicans tried to end same-day voter registration before as part of a 2013 voter ID bill that was struck down in court on the grounds that it targeted Black voters.

Early voting for the Nov. 8 election started Oct. 20.

Cooper looks to 2024

In Cooper’s Pluribus News interview, he said governors’ races will to be close and could affect the 2024 presidential election. If a right-wing governor is elected who “doesn’t mind an autocracy, and who doesn’t mind flipping the switch on what the people of his state have done, to be loyal to Donald Trump or whoever the Republican nominee might be, then we’ve got a big a problem,” Cooper said.

Cooper has previously talked about extremism in the Republican Party, telling The N&O in August that candidates are trying to “out-MAGA each other.”

Cooper, as usual, demurred when asked about his plans after the two years left in his term as governor, and said, “we’ll see at that point.” Political insiders have floated his name as a potential presidential candidate.

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