Roy Cooper
Introduction
Roy Cooper is an American attorney and Democratic politician who served two terms as the 75th Governor of North Carolina from 2017 to 2025, after eight years as the state’s attorney general, and who is now the Democratic nominee-style frontrunner for the 2026 North Carolina Senate race against Republican Michael Whatley. Under his watch, the state agency that managed more than $1 billion in federal and state disaster recovery money for Hurricanes Matthew and Florence directed more than $100 million of it toward affordable rental housing projects β open to applicants who were not hurricane victims β while over a thousand families whose homes the storms destroyed were still waiting for repairs or reconstruction. The arrangement, documented in a think-tank analysis and a state auditor’s report, has become a standing controversy in his Senate campaign .
Background Information
Cooper, a Democrat, governed North Carolina through the recovery from Hurricane Matthew (October 2016) and Hurricane Florence (September 2018), two storms that devastated eastern parts of the state. Recovery was handled by the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR), which managed the Homeowner Recovery Program (HRP) β more than $1 billion in federal and state funds β under an agency that reported to his administration . After leaving office in January 2025, Cooper entered the 2026 Senate race, where the Cook Political Report rates the contest “lean” Democratic and where he has led Whatley by around nine points in recent RealClearPolitics averaging .
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Allegations. The claims in this section are criticisms of governance drawn from an analysis by the John Locke Foundation, a free-market think tank in North Carolina, and from a critical performance report by the North Carolina Office of the State Auditor covering the agency Cooper oversaw. Nothing here was admitted by Cooper, nothing was criminally charged, and nothing has been adjudicated in court β this is a documented policy and management failure record, not a finding of personal wrongdoing. Cooper’s team declined to comment, and the state office defended the program as normal and compliant.
According to the John Locke Foundation’s analysis, NCORR diverted $107.9 million toward affordable rental housing β $64.2 million from federal disaster recovery funds and $43.7 million from mitigation funds β instead of prioritizing direct hurricane victims, at the same time its Homeowner Recovery Program was running out of money. Of $779.2 million in federal recovery funding eligible for home reconstruction, NCORR initially allocated only $429.7 million to the HRP, later raising that to $664.3 million as funds ran short β still only enough to rebuild homes for roughly 70 percent of enrolled families, forcing the General Assembly to appropriate an additional $297 million . The New York Post’s account of the analysis put the headline figure at $100 million steered to affordable housing as the roughly $1 billion agency suffered a budget shortfall .
The emblematic project was Starway Village, a $9 million, 278-unit complex near Wilmington β about 12 miles from the beach β open to anyone earning up to roughly $45,000 a year; the affordable-housing projects did not require tenants to be hurricane victims. As of February 2025, more than 1,000 families were still waiting for reconstruction of their homes; NCORR promised everyone would be home by the end of 2025 except about 39 “atypical” cases, yet roughly 400 families were still out of rebuilt homes as late as September 2025, with hundreds living in campers and motels .
In November 2025, the state auditor’s office β in an independent assessment ordered by the General Assembly β issued a critical report on the HRP’s administration, quoting State Auditor Dave Boliek: “The unfortunate truth of this report is the response from North Carolina to Hurricanes Matthew and Florence was a disaster. When government decides to focus on administrative procedures ahead of boots on the ground, hurricane victims get hurt.” The report recommended long-term restructuring of the state’s disaster response . A state audit reported during Cooper’s tenure found reconstruction of more than 1,100 homes unfinished when he left office, with 3,522 rebuilt; it found the state took an average of 138 days to decide eligibility and about four years after that to begin construction .
Public Reaction and Consequences
The state office defended the program, telling the Post that NCORR “worked in collaboration with HUD” to prioritize storm-impacted areas and that states usually incorporate affordable housing into recovery plans β adding that the ReBuild NC program had “returned 4,240 eastern North Carolina families to safer, more resilient homes” . Cooper’s team refused to comment, and the Post reported reaching his campaign repeatedly without response. The John Locke Foundation framed the diversion bluntly β “college students and young professionals enjoy discounted rent on taxpayer-subsidized luxury apartments” while Matthew families lived in aging campers β and warned that the successor agency handling Hurricane Helene recovery was repeating the pattern, having allocated $191.3 million to affordable rentals . A WHQR report found that years after the storms, more than a thousand families were still without rebuilt or repaired homes .
Current Status
Cooper is running for the U.S. Senate seat in the November 2026 election as the clear frontrunner, and the recovery record has become the central line of attack against him. No legal action, charge, or formal finding of personal misconduct exists against Cooper; the documented record concerns the performance of the agency under his administration. He has claimed he “helped repair or rebuild more than 14,000 homes,” an estimate his campaign said covered more than just the HUD-funded reconstruction the audit examined β which found 3,522 homes rebuilt and 1,100 unfinished at his departure . NCORR has since been replaced by the Division of Community Revitalization, which the Locke analysis says is making comparable allocations .
Impact on Their Career/Life
The recovery record now trails Cooper into the highest-stakes race of his career: a Senate campaign in which Republicans can point to a state auditor’s report, a $297 million emergency appropriation, and the Starway Village complex as evidence that his administration prioritized housing policy over storm victims. His claimed 14,000-home figure sits against an audit count less than a quarter that size, and his campaign’s refusal to comment on the $100 million question has left the NCORR record unanswered . With a nine-point polling lead, he remains favored β but the documentable failures of his second-term agency have given the race its sharpest line of criticism .
Sources
- New York Post, “Roy Cooper steered $100M in NC disaster relief to low-income housing as hurricane victims went without homes,” October 2, 2026 β source
- John Locke Foundation, “Cooper’s NCORR failed hurricane victims: Is Stein’s DCR making the same mistake?,” November 5, 2025 β source
- North Carolina Office of the State Auditor, “State Auditor Releases Critical Report on North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency,” November 19, 2025 β source