A North Carolina Where People Are Better Educated, Healthier, With More Money In Their Pockets

Today, December 18, 2024, Governor Roy Cooper delivered his farewell address and celebrated the progress made building a North Carolina where people are better educated, healthier and have more money in their pockets to live lives of purpose and abundance.

The Governor returned to Nash County Community College where he launched his gubernatorial campaign nine years ago and reflected on his accomplishments in office as his second term as North Carolina’s 75th governor comes to a close. This was the final event in a series of events reflecting on Governor Cooper’s accomplishments in office.

Farewell address as prepared:

Good morning. Thank you all for being here today. Christopher, thank you for your friendship and serving as my Pastor since you came from Tarboro to White Memorial. Thank you to Kristi Jones for that introduction! I have had the best staff in state history over the years and Kristi — I’m grateful for people like you, Julia White, Stephen Bryant, Noelle Talley and Susan Moore who’ve all been with me at least 24 years or longer and dozens more who’ve been with me through the entire time as Governor and longer. Will all people who’ve served in the Governor’s Office or in one of my cabinet agencies, please stand. Thank you.

You know, in answer to a question from a reporter last week about what I’d miss most as Governor, I said “ingress and egress to sporting events.” I will miss that, but the thing I’ll miss most of all is the extraordinary public servants I’ve worked with year in and year out. I’m deeply grateful for you.

I’m honored to see so many friends, new and old. It means so much that you’d take time to be here today. But before I get any further, I want to thank my amazing family. You don’t do a job like this alone. Your family serves too. I know my mom and dad are looking down and smiling. My amazing daughters — Hilary, Natalie and Claire, all so accomplished along with my great son-in-law, Zack. My brother Pell, a respected Judge here in Nash, Edgecombe and Wilson counties, and his wonderful wife Meredith. And of course, our fantastic First Lady Kristin Cooper! She has helped me in countless ways in addition to visiting all one hundred counties, supporting our arts and North Carolina’s children.

Through some very long decades of public service, 3 Democratic primaries and 13 general elections, my family has been with me — steadfast but never sparing the truth when I needed to hear it. That’s a hard line to walk, and for that and so much more I’m grateful to them. In particular, Kristin, you have been a cradle of support and stability, offering me a deep well of love and humor and real talk in the moments I needed it most. I’m grateful for your love, support and friendship.

And it’s so wonderful to come home and be with my extended family, the people here in my beloved Nash County and Rocky Mount. This is where Pell and I were born and raised. It’s where we worked summers on the farm. Went to Sunday School and church every Sunday. Played little league and then high school sports. Where we learned from our mom and dad, our public school teachers and preachers and our entire community the values that are the bedrock of our state. Integrity, hard work, looking out for your neighbor.

In 1957, three weeks before I was born, the North Carolina General Assembly did something that made us unique among all the other states. They adopted a state toast that many of you know. If you grew up here, you likely learned the words as a child. If you moved here, you’ve surely heard it recited and been curious about it. What you may not know is that the toast was actually written as a poem at the turn of the 19th century, some fifty years before it was adopted by the legislature.

It’s a beautiful toast that brings to life the natural splendor found across our state. Flowers, long leaf pines, sunshine. And while most of the toast describes our state’s enduring beauty, there’s a line that describes our state’s enduring spirit. The end of the first verse says North Carolina is “where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great.”

It never ceases to amaze me that this line of poetry written about our state a hundred years ago could just as easily have been written yesterday to evoke the soul of North Carolina.

It’s a line that reminds us that wherever we are in life, we can and will get better. We’re never done with the work. That our people are North Carolina’s engine. That the choices we make today will impact not just our lives, but the generations to come.

When I became Governor in 2017, I established a CEO mission statement. I wanted to build a North Carolina where people were better educated and healthier, with more money in their pockets and the opportunities to live with purpose and abundance. I knew these goals mattered to our quality of life now and for decades into the future. Bringing strength and greatness for our people.

Today, in 2024, the progress we’ve made together on every part of our mission is remarkable.

Much of it is a great comeback story. I was sworn in at 12:01 am on January 1st 2017. While I physically took the oath in the State Capitol, I also stood amid the rubble of HB2.

Major companies were pulling jobs out of the state. Musicians and entertainers were cancelling shows. Sporting events were being moved. The film industry pretty much left town. The list went on and on. North Carolina’s reputation was in tatters.

But there was one intangible impact that weighed heavy on me that New Year’s Eve and the days to come. It was so many people who told me — this isn’t who we are. This isn’t what our state’s about. We could measure the impact of HB2 in lost jobs, lost revenue, lost plans. But so many North Carolinians, they had lost their belief in our state.

I knew we had to turn that around fast. And I knew we could, because in North Carolina, our success IS our people. We rise time and again because of the resilience of every community. But even as we got the legislature to erase HB2 from the books, these past eight years certainly tested us in other ways. With historic challenges from devastating storms to the shock of a global pandemic, our comeback story was never a given.

But we did come back. Today we’ve added more than 640,000 good-paying jobs since 2017. We’re the third-fastest growing state in the country, the best for business and the epicenter for the clean energy economy. We’ve covered more than 600,000 people with health insurance through Medicaid Expansion. And we’ve restored our reputation as a welcoming place where people can thrive, innovate and grow.

Going back centuries, the hallmark of North Carolina’s success has been our innovative spirit. It’s how 240 years ago we started the first public university in the nation to open its doors. How 121 years ago we became first in flight. How seventy years ago a forward-looking group of North Carolinians created the Research Triangle Park to diversify our economy.

During my time as Governor, we’ve seen the fruits of that innovative spirit through Medicaid expansion, medical debt relief, a boom in the clean energy economy, massive connections to high-speed internet, investments in our education and so much more.

If our comeback story was never a given, then getting Medicaid expansion passed was little more than a pipe dream when I became Governor. But the prospect of getting health care for hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians was too important. I knew that passing Medicaid expansion would be THE working families bill of the decade.

It’s a story that took many twists and turns, and through all of them, we knew we could never, ever give up. And we didn’t. We assembled a unique coalition of advocates who cared about this for different reasons, but who could influence their own Republican legislators. Business leaders who needed healthy workers. Rural county commissioners whose hospitals were on the edge of closing. Tough on crime Republican sheriffs who saw the toll of mental illness and substance abuse and knew that so many people in their jails needed healthcare not handcuffs. And it worked. On December 1st of last year, I handed Penny the state’s first Medicaid Expansion card with tears in her eyes and mine.

I went from getting sued in my first few weeks in office by the Republican legislative leaders for trying to expand Medicaid to welcoming those same leaders to the mansion on a beautiful spring day six years later to sign the Medicaid Expansion bill into law. Talk about climbing a tall mountain!

But the bill wasn’t about them or me. Medicaid expansion was always about the hardworking North Carolinians who desperately needed and deserved access to health care. The working people I met — the child care teacher in Garner. The custodian in High Point. The home health worker in Charlotte. We expanded Medicaid for them and their families.

And today, just over one year after the program went live, in half the time we thought it would take, we’ve enrolled more than 600,000 North Carolinians in quality health care!

This is a generational investment in people’s health. Because health, like wealth, is passed down. When someone can live a healthier life today, that passes on to their children and their children’s children. It’s how the weak grow strong and the strong grow great.

The same goes for our work to get rid of medical debt. As Medicaid expansion reached more and more people, it was clear that they were happy to finally have health insurance but often had a mountain of hospital bills they could never pay. So together with feedback from hospitals, national experts and local advocates, we crafted a pioneering solution that leverages federal funds to relieve $4 billion in medical debt for 2 million North Carolinians — a plan that’s now a roadmap for other states.

Back in 2018, as the gears were still turning to realize the dream of Medicaid expansion, we created another important roadmap.

I told my team I wanted to grow our economy while protecting our environment and the best way to do both was to prioritize clean energy. I then signed Executive Order 80 which reaffirmed our commitment to fight climate change and lead our transition to clean energy. The order called for the creation of a North Carolina Clean Energy Plan, which we put together with input from all interested parties over about an 18-month period. The plan itself generated worldwide attention for North Carolina, helping us to attract clean energy businesses with great-paying jobs. But we knew we needed to put it into law to get the best results.

When our chance came, we put our Clean Energy Plan roadmap to work and passed HB 951, which made North Carolina just the second state in the southeast to put a carbon reduction requirement into law for our power producers — a 70% reduction by 2030 with attainment of carbon zero by 2050.

Nobody expected we could pass a bipartisan law like this. But we were ready to seize the moment because we had done the work. We knew where we wanted to go and we knew how to get there.

And we’ve continued to use Executive Orders to push our state toward more renewable energy like wind and solar and more electric vehicles. And all of it has meant more better paying jobs for North Carolina. The investments we’ve made today have cemented our place at the epicenter of the clean energy economy. Take electric vehicles. The supply chain for components to make them is quickly becoming a “Made in North Carolina” industry. We have a claim to every link in the supply chain from the silicon chips to the electric batteries all the way to the charging stations. But these investments are also a promise to future generations. They’re a commitment to a stronger economy and a cleaner environment for our children and grandchildren.

But perhaps nowhere is our future on better display than the public school classrooms around our state from our earliest learners to our community colleges and universities.

My mother was a public school teacher, right here in Nash County. Most of you know how much I love our teachers, and I apologize to each of you because my mother was the best teacher in the history of our state. Still today people come up and say I want to pay you a compliment, and I think it’ll be something nice about me. And they say “your mother was the best teacher I ever had.” That’s the impression great teachers leave, and I along with my children were taught by many of those amazing public school teachers right here in Nash County.

At the start of my time as Governor, we succeeded in pushing the General Assembly further than they otherwise would have gone on education investments. We expanded NC Pre-K, re-instated the Teaching Fellows program, and we have gotten public school teachers a total of 19% in raises over the years. Obviously not nearly enough, but important to get.

And after hearing from people in higher education that small emergency expenses like car repairs or medical bills were causing some students to drop out just before graduation, I created the Finish Line Grants program with federal funds. It worked so well to keep students in school that the legislature began to put it in the budget. And now more than 16,000 of these grants have helped students cross the finish line with a degree or credential so they can provide for their families.

In the past eight years, North Carolina’s public schools have achieved the highest graduation rate in history — 87%. North Carolina has more National Board-certified teachers than any state in America. Last year, our public schools set records in AP exams. And our community colleges and universities have helped me close more economic deals than I could list in one speech.

We see the weak grow strong and the strong grow great because of public education.

And yet. And yet. Right wing extremists and For Profit schools have peddled a false narrative that our public schools are failing, using that lie to justify their programs to rob public taxpayer money and send it to private schools for the wealthy through vouchers.

So in my last year as Governor, I named 2024 as the Year of Public Schools. Because I wanted North Carolina to know in all-caps and bold-face that quality public education is the key to our state’s success.

We expanded Medicaid by pulling together a nontraditional coalition of people who were able to convince Republican legislators it was important. We are beginning to do the same thing for public schools. And we have to succeed. To keep our promise and ensure that our children can live up to theirs. We can’t stop now. We can’t let our children down.

And it’s not just education. The generational investments we have made in our state will echo into the future. But every inch of headway we’ve made demands our continued vigilance. Just as our comeback was never a given, progress is never guaranteed. We have to work for it. We have to earn it.

And I know we can, because we’ve made it this far together. We’ve built a North Carolina that’s a healthier, better educated place where people have more money in their pockets. And we stand ready to welcome prosperity with open arms for generations to come. Strong and great. But we’re not done. I’m not done, and you aren’t either.

As we work to protect our progress we must also build on our success. And though more challenges lie before us, I know we often find a path to success carved on finding common ground. Although we must adhere to our values and stand up for what we believe, we cannot allow the divisive tenor of today’s politics to rule the day. Not when we have so much promise to fulfill.

I know I leave this office in the good hands of Governor-Elect Josh Stein. He will continue to build on our success and blaze his own new trails.

But for the last eight years, getting to lead the state I love so much has been an extraordinary privilege. Challenging. Humbling. And the best job I’ve ever had. And I have valued every day. As our great state toast concludes in the last verse:

The near land, the dear land, whatever fate,
The blest land, the best land, the Old North State!

Being born in North Carolina, that was luck. But being Governor of North Carolina, that’s because so many people came together, with God’s guidance and blessings, to help me. And together we have made a difference. Thank you and may God Bless the Great State of North Carolina.