- Coming up here on PBS North Carolina, a one-on-one talk with Governor Roy Cooper.

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[soft upbeat music] - Hello, I'm David Crabtree with PBS North Carolina and the great privilege of being here in the people's home with North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper.

Governor, thank you.

- I'm so glad to be with you, David.

Welcome to your house, - Thank you.

- The People's House.

- Thank you very much.

The first time we sat and talked in this home was almost six years ago.

- That's hard to believe.

- Where did the time go?

- Really?

It's gone so fast but so much has happened when you think about it and it has been the honor and privilege of my life to serve as governor of the state where I grew up.

State that I love so much.

What an opportunity this has been.

And it's so much more fun now to know that I've got more than two years to go, looking forward to it.

- I have a lot of things I wanna cover here, Governor in the next half hour.

Now let's begin with a couple of very serious things because in the past two weeks alone, you have had to deal with a lot.

Here we are in this joyous time of the year between Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and yet, let's look at what happened in Moore County to begin with.

With the terrorism regarding the power outages.

Where do we stand?

What light literally can you shed on that?

- Well, one thing I've learned about this job is you've got to learn to try to anticipate most anything.

Who would've thought we would've had a pandemic?

Who would've thought that we would've had an earthquake in Allegheny County?

Here we have the very serious situation of people who knew what they were doing, shooting up a substation intentionally.

It was an attack on a community that threw 40,000 people into darkness for four nights.

A joint, local, state and federal investigation is occurring, they are leaving no stone unturned.

We must find who did this, bring them to justice and we need to find out why as well.

In the meantime, we've got to strengthen our grid, to do more, to up the security because this is unacceptable.

- Any indication why Moore County?

- We do not know yet.

And maybe within the investigation they know more, I know that they have been tracking down leads at this point.

But we do know that this is a potential vulnerability because there are thousands of these substations across the country.

I had a conversation with U.S.

Homeland Security Secretary, Mayorkas the other day about things that we need to do to make cost effective investments to step up the security here depending on the level of power that's being generated or distributed through these substations, we need to make sure this doesn't happen again.

- It's interesting you have to deal with something like that that has nothing to do with politics, at least that you know of.

And then also turn around within a matter of days with the news of a sixth grader bringing a gun into a classroom in Fuquay-Varina.

- Yeah We have a real challenge now with gun violence.

It has exceeded child injury deaths by car accidents.

We now have more children dying injury deaths from guns than we do from cars which is an astounding statistic.

And we know that more people have been buying guns and we know that more criminals are stealing them particularly from people who really don't know how to use them where children are getting their hands on them.

We gotta do a better job.

I support the Second Amendment, I support people's right to have a gun but we have to do more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, of children and of people who are mentally ill to the point where they are a danger to themselves or others.

And Governor, you said of course, you support Second Amendment rights.

As Attorney General for 16 years?

You were a friend of law enforcement.

You haven't wavered on your support of Second Amendment rights yet now over those 16 years as Attorney General, six years as governor so we're talking 22 years there.

Have we made much progress?

- I think we've made progress in keeping our communities safer but they aren't safe enough.

And we know that we need to reinforce strong and fair law enforcement but we also know that the proliferation of guns in our community has skyrocketed particularly during the pandemic and the incidences of gun violence are greater.

There's some common sense steps that we can take to reduce gun violence in our communities.

More background checks, stronger background checks, we know we can do that.

More education on gun safety.

We can do that.

Red flag laws to allow judges to take guns out of the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others.

And we need to bring people together in a bipartisan way and to make some of these changes that have support of more than 90% of population because they know that this is unacceptable.

You know, you can't be tough on crime and be soft on gun safety.

And when you talk to police officers who are out there on the field and they don't know whether a person has a gun or not and the chancellors are going up and up and up that they likely do have a gun because there's so many more out there, it's a pro-law enforcement thing to do to make sure that we keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't be having them.

- Moore versus Harper, United States Supreme Court, North Carolina focused, who would've thought?

- Who would've thought?

This is a complicated case that can be boiled down to something very simple.

You know Donald Trump has been saying lately that when you don't like the result, you tear away the part of the constitution that you don't like.

Well, the Republican legislature in North Carolina didn't like the result of the state's Supreme Court ruling that their redistricting was a partisan gerrymandering.

So they've decided to take a case to the U.S. Supreme Court that would tear off a piece of our state constitution that having to do with balance of power.

They're arguing that the state legislatures should have total control over how federal elections are run in North Carolina and that the Supreme Court should have no say so.

Even if it's unconstitutional, the Supreme Court should have no say so and the governor should have no veto over bad laws.

It is amazing that it even got to the United States Supreme Court.

When you look at who's opposed to this, it's a bipartisan array of scholars, of past governors and attorneys generals and Supreme Court Chief Justices, people who know that this does damage to our democracy.

The people who are on their side are the Republican National Committee, the same group of Republican Attorneys General who are attacking a lot of laws for partisan gain.

And then John Eastman who is the architect of the Donald Trump idea who wanted to use this independent state legislature theory to change presidential electors to make it different from the result of the popular vote in that state.

So it's pretty clear how this case ought to turn out but I'll tell you this, free and fair elections are the foundation of our democracy.

We need to build back people's confidence.

I don't think there's any reason for people to have lost confidence in our elections and particularly in North Carolina.

They have been very well run and they reflect what actually happened in these races.

But this misinformation, this using attacks on our electoral system for partisan gain is just wrong.

- Editorial in the New York Times over the weekend said, the case should never have made it to the Supreme Court, doesn't belong there.

Obviously, you agree with that with what you just said.

- For sure.

And there was a three hour debate over this with a number of justices who believe that this could be something that they could support.

I'm hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court will do the right thing and turn this down because checks and balances are the foundation of our democracy.

The judiciary keeps check on the legislature and the executive, the legislature passes the laws, the executive carries out the laws.

It really brilliant.

Our foundation of democracy is brilliant.

And when you kick that out and you give all power to one of the branches, then it goes sideways and that's not the kind of system that we want in North Carolina.

It certainly doesn't reflect our state constitution.

- For six years you have done some fairly fierce battles with the legislature.

We have a new legislature coming into session next month.

A lot of familiar faces, several new faces.

I presume you're already working on your legislative package.

What's your number one priority?

- Well, let me step back and talk about the premise of your question.

I think it's important to point out that I have worked with them in a number of areas and I think people expect us to try to work together to solve problems and meet challenges.

They also expect you to stand up for what you think is right and fight for what you think is right.

And that's what I've tried to do when it comes to this legislature.

We have worked well together on economic development.

During COVID, we worked together to get children back into the classroom in person because we thought that was critical.

We have increased our support for community colleges.

We passed a bipartisan clean energy bill that's gonna get North Carolina to carbon zero in the power sector.

So we've been able to do a lot.

But CNBC for the first time in history ranked North Carolina as the number one state in the country for business.

But one of the main reasons for that they said was the fact that my veto has been able to stop these business killing court culture war laws that the legislature has tried to pass over the years.

Businesses don't like those.

I think they're wrong in and of themselves but that balance my being able to have an effective veto and my ability to work with them on the things that we can agree on is important.

And yes, we're getting ready for the legislative session but I'm probably gonna be spending more time investing the transformational federal funds that we have coming out of this pandemic that's gonna fix roads and bridges and water systems and connect everybody to high speed internet.

I'm really looking forward to that and believe that that will be the main focus of the administration over the next year.

- You just hit on something that is so key when you said for everyone to have access to internet.

- [Roy] Yeah.

- Will that happen before you leave office?

- Well, we will come a lot closer.

We got a headstart.

We used American Rescue Plan funding, part of it, to begin what's called Great Grants.

And this is something that I've been able to work with the general assembly on and we've been able, I talked to someone the other day who just came up to me in an event and said, "I've got high-speed internet at my house "and I didn't have it before."

Lived in a rural county in western North Carolina.

We've already connected thousands of houses.

We're gonna have more money coming in from the bipartisan infrastructure plan.

And you know, David, one of the things I think we're supposed to do in life, I guess it's the Presbyterian elder in me.

You gotta find something good outta something bad.

Pandemic was horrible, killed thousands of people in North Carolina.

But what we've been able to do is to say, okay, this is shining a spotlight on a lot of challenges.

One of those things was high speed internet access.

We know we need it for remote education.

We know we need it for medical appointments and to get medical treatment.

We know that small businesses need to connect with global markets.

So we were able to take transformational money, billions of dollars to actually connect homes.

I hope we can, I think it's gonna be a little longer than that but we certainly will have set the foundation in place to complete the process of getting homes and businesses connected to high speed.

And there's a lot of homes that are connected to internet that doesn't work very well and we know you need better than that these days.

And that's one of the priorities here is not just getting it to people who don't have it but making the connection that some people have better.

One more thing real quick 'cause I know we're working on time but it's not just the fiber, it is making sure that people know how to use it, can afford to use it and have the devices to use it.

And part of our strategy is getting people signed up for the Affordable Connectivity Program where they can get $30 a month toward their plan to make sure that they're connected and we're providing education for people to help them.

We're fixing equipment to get to them.

It's a really exciting time.

We had a center where we're doing this and I remember seeing a grandmother and her little granddaughter walking out hand in hand.

They'd both got in training, they'd both signed up for the Affordable Connectivity Program so they were gonna have it and they both were having little laptops under their arms that volunteers had come in and helped to fix old laptops and are giving 'em out to people.

Really exciting stuff that's happened.

- Progress can be an amazing thing.

- It really can be, no doubt.

- You mentioned the CNBC rating a moment ago.

You've had some major wins with major companies choosing North Carolina.

In the next couple of years, are you anticipating, I don't want to have a spoiler alert to push anyone away, you can't talk about certain things but are you anticipating more large commitments even as some of the business leaders tell us, we may be in for a bumpy ride the third and fourth quarter of next year.

- So we know the economy will slow a little bit but businesses are making long-term investments in North Carolina.

They're not looking just to the next year or the next quarter, they're looking a decade or more down the road.

They see North Carolina as a place where they can get the workforce and for all of these jobs that are coming in, all the credit goes to North Carolina's workforce.

We have amazing people and when I'm talking to CEOs now about where they wanna come, their number one thing is workforce and then workforce and then workforce.

That's the big deal.

They want a well-trained, diverse workforce and I'm able to tell them that North Carolina A&T State University graduates more Black engineers than any other institution in the country.

I said that to one CEO, he said he already knew.

He said they graduate more Black engineers every year than the state of Wisconsin.

So we have, I believe, the greatest array of public and private universities in the country.

The greatest community college system in the country and businesses know that.

So yes, we will have more come here, we will have them expand here.

Some of them are figuring out different ways to work because of COVID, more remote working.

But North Carolina is gonna continue to remain, I think a thriving place for people to do business.

We've just gotta keep down this road of doing the right kinds of things, investing in education, staying away from the extremes and providing the stability and consistency that businesses want.

- Stability, let's talk about small businesses for a moment.

Referred to all my lifetime as the backbone of the country for the economy.

I was talking with a small business owner just today who said we still have regulations.

It's still tough to get affordable healthcare.

It's more affordable than it was but it's still tough.

And our taxes, particularly at the state level can be tough.

What do you say to those small business owners?

- Well, I would say number one, they are the backbone of our economy.

Number two, if we can expand Medicaid, we can ensure some of their employees for those who can't afford health insurance premiums for people 'cause this is mostly for working North Carolinians.

- [David] We have the votes this year?

- I believe we will.

And it helps drive down premiums for the private sector.

North Carolina, we continue to want to cut taxes for middle income people, those on the lower end of the scale.

The corporate tax rate right now is only 2% in North Carolina, one of the lowest in the country that has a tax rate.

So I think that we have the kind of environment on taxes that is certainly conducive to business.

What we need to make sure they have is a lot of people who are well trained and can do the kind of work that they provide because a lot of business owners who talk to me, workforce is the number one priority for them.

Getting people with the right kinda training to help them in their business.

- You know, two years ago, you and I could not have sat here and had this conversation because of COVID.

People who work with you and people, state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said to me, Roy Cooper hit a different gear in leadership during the pandemic.

What did you learn personally about yourself and about North Carolina in dealing with some of the darkest times that we've seen?

- I learned that people are mostly good and care about each other very much.

People did the hard things.

People in the healthcare industry risked their very lives to go to work to help people.

People out on the front lines who couldn't stay home because we were trying to stop the spread of this virus by keeping as many people home as we could, went out and did it anyway.

And I believe that we can do anything as a people if we have faith in each other and rely on each other.

Yes, things got contentious as things moved along because people were frustrated and I certainly- - [David] And frightened.

- And frightened and I understand that but the fact that we were able to put forth a plan that kept people safe and in North Carolina, we were among the lowest states in COVID deaths per capita and job loss per capita because we took the right balanced approach.

And my whole idea here was to have people who knew what they were doing, doctors, scientists, people who had done the research realize what I didn't know.

I'll tell you, I never thought I would read as much about viruses and communicable diseases that I read during this but I believe that our team approach, we did the right thing for North Carolina.

We saved lives and now we're emerging from this pandemic stronger than we ever have with funding that's gonna be transformational for a generation.

And I'm so excited about that, finding that good out of bad which is a positive thing.

- Well, and on a lighter note, I remember in a couple of your news conferences in those days talking about eating a lot of pizza.

That you and your staff, that's all anybody did, was eat pizza.

Do you still eat pizza?

- Yeah, of course I do.

How can you live life without that?

- Here we are, as I said, almost six years in, in this job as the state's chief executive and what you and I quickly agree is the best state on the planet.

No question about that.

What's been your greatest surprise as Governor?

- Wow, well, I think I was surprised at how hard people are working.

When I would get out and go and meet with people who were on the front lines during this pandemic and how hard they were working, it made me want to do even more to try to help them, to help people with childcare.

This was a real issue for people who were trying to be in the workforce.

And I knew we had a state of wonderful workers but to see them work under adversity and to see them succeed in adversity was a surprising thing.

And it made me even more confident and more excited about living here and seeing the kinda people that we have in North Carolina.

- What's the greatest frustration?

- Right now, not having everybody in this state covered with health insurance.

You know, I think it's a moral issue when you think about trying to make sure that people get the healthcare that they need.

And we have 1.2 million North Carolinians who have no health insurance.

That's wrong.

We have the ability to cut that number in half with Medicaid expansion.

Not only are we losing people because they don't have health insurance, we're turning away $521 million a month, a month when all we have to do is say, yes, we will accept Medicaid expansion.

That has been the biggest frustration to me because there are no good arguments against this anymore.

And I'm not sure there ever has been.

But for sure, now that we know that this is gonna be around and now that we have seen what other states have been able to do in increasing mental health and addiction treatment, it has been so frustrating not to.

We're this close, David, we are this close.

I believe it will happen in the next few months but every month that goes by, losing more than $0.5 billion and knowing that people are dying is very frustrating.

- Have about a minute left, Governor.

It's the question people still want to ask you and I know you're tired of it but I'm going to ask again.

Once you leave this office that you have served, it will have been eight years, what's on your horizon?

- Well, let me say how grateful I am to the people for giving me this opportunity and putting their trust in me and I've worked hard to be governor for all the people.

And at the time we're doing this interview, I have two years and 12 days to go.

And so I'm so excited about those two years.

I do like public service, I've done it all my life.

I've always figured that if you do a good job at what you do, all kinds of doors can open for you.

And I'll just see what door opens for me after this is over.

- A lot of possibilities.

Santa gonna come down this chimney?

- Nah, not that one.

Doesn't wanna jump in those gas logs but Santa is definitely coming, definitely coming to the governor's mansion.

- Governor Roy Cooper, as always, thank you for your time.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday.

- Thank you, David.

Enjoyed it a lot.

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