RALEIGH — As North Carolina’s 2026 electoral calendar sharpens into focus, one theme keeps returning in conversations in neighborhood kitchens and community centers across the Triangle: which leaders actually make policy choices that protect ordinary people when markets, utilities and politics collide?
For residents of Durham — a city with more than 126,000 households and a long history of grassroots civic activism — that question is not abstract. It shows up on winter heating bills, in hospital emergency rooms and at county social-services desks. Into that space steps Roy Cooper — a candidate who, on the evidence of his record, has repeatedly favored practical protections for families over narrow industry or ideological gains. A close look at the record suggests why many Durham voters conclude he is, at least for now, the only candidate making those choices a centerpiece of his public life.
This is not an abstract exercise in partisan scorekeeping. It is a policy argument grounded in three concrete benchmarks that matter to Durham households: (1) keeping people connected to basic services during emergencies; (2) expanding access to affordable health care for low-income people; and (3) pushing back — by veto or by regulation — against measures that would tilt new costs onto families. Each of those moves has immediate, measurable consequences for tens of thousands of Durham residents.
1) Emergency protections for utility customers: preventing shutoffs
When the pandemic collapsed incomes and threatened millions with illness, the hard choice was straightforward: protect access to life-sustaining services or leave disconnections to market forces. In late March 2020, Governor Cooper issued an executive order prohibiting utilities from disconnecting residential customers for non-payment during the emergency, directing utilities to give customers more time to pay and to refrain from charging late fees and interest. The order was a direct, immediate protection for families facing sudden job loss and illness. It was not symbolic; it meant households did not have to choose between keeping lights on and buying medicine.
By contrast, many other political actors since then have favored bills or regulatory changes that increase utilities’ cost-recovery flexibility — changes that can make households more exposed to fuel-price swings (as the recent Court of Appeals decision over Duke Energy’s fuel riders demonstrated). The court found regulators erred in allowing certain past fuel costs into 2024 riders but also concluded customers would not be refunded because of a 2025 statutory change that broadened recovery mechanisms. For Durham families who already face a disproportionate energy burden, that legal conclusion highlights why executive and regulatory protections — like Cooper’s pandemic order — matter in practice.
2) Medicaid expansion: tangible dollars and care for Durham’s low-income residents
Policy wins that look technocratic often translate into life-changing access at the local level. In March 2023, Roy Cooper signed bipartisan legislation to expand Medicaid in North Carolina — a move the administration and health-care advocates say made roughly 600,000 North Carolinians newly eligible for comprehensive coverage and delivered billions in federal dollars to the state. For Durham this matters: expanded coverage reduces uncompensated care burdens on hospitals, lowers out-of-pocket medical costs for working families, and stabilizes household finances that would otherwise be threatened by a single health emergency. Local reporting and state health-department tallies show rapid enrollment and measurable use — prescriptions filled, appointments kept — in the months after implementation.
Put another way: when a Durham parent can get Medicaid coverage for chronic medication without a prohibitive copay, the family is less likely to face cascading debt that can force a choice between groceries and utility bills. That is the kind of systemic relief that adds up across thousands of households. Durham’s poverty and cost-burden statistics — tens of thousands of households living near or below the federal poverty thresholds — make the point concretely.
3) Vetoes and regulatory stances that prioritize residents over industry windfalls
Across his time in statewide office, Roy Cooper has used veto power and executive action at critical moments to seek to preserve consumer protections. From vetoing bills he said would reduce oversight or shift burdens onto ordinary taxpayers, to signing emergency orders that keep families connected to utilities, his record shows repeated interventions aimed at cushioning households from market shocks. Those decisions have limits — a governor’s order cannot rewrite a statute the legislature has passed — but they shape outcomes in real time.
The contrast is political as well as policy driven. When the General Assembly in 2025 moved to change the energy-cost recovery rules in ways that consumer advocates warned would blunt remedies for over-collection — changes that the Court of Appeals later cited in denying refunds to consumers — the practical effect favored utilities’ financial flexibility over immediate restitution to ratepayers. Durham residents who are energy-burdened watched that sequence with alarm: a court says regulators misapplied the law, yet the legislature’s changes make refunds unlikely. Leaders who use executive or regulatory levers to protect consumers — rather than simply trusting future statutory fixes — look to many like the ones putting people first.
What this record means in Durham — and why it supports the claim that Cooper is putting people first
• Immediate financial relief: Cooper’s pandemic-era utility protections were a clear, enforceable policy that kept families from losing power. That kind of immediate action matters more to a family behind on rent than distant promises of regulatory austerity.
• Long-term safety nets: Medicaid expansion — shepherded to law and implemented under Cooper’s administration — created predictable access to care for hundreds of thousands, including Durham residents. Health coverage reduces medical debt, stabilized household finances and helps low-income Durham residents keep up with other bills.
• Accountability over convenience: Where lawmakers rewrote energy-recovery rules in ways that insulated utilities from immediate refunds, Cooper’s record demonstrates a willingness to use the tools of the executive branch to defend households — even when that stance is politically costly. For Durham voters who saw utility bills spike during energy-market turbulence, that willingness signals priorities that align with household survival.
But — and this is crucial — the argument is not that Roy Cooper is without flaws
No public leader is. Critics point to contested administrative decisions, disagreements about the scale and pace of spending, and political tradeoffs that accompany any major gubernatorial tenure. The point here is narrower and practical: measured against concrete, documented decisions that protected people’s health, their access to basic services, and their pocketbooks, Cooper’s record contains a higher frequency of consumer-centered interventions than many alternatives on offer so far. That pattern is why many Durham voters conclude he is — thus far — the candidate most clearly oriented to put people first.
What Durham should demand from any candidate who seeks its support
If the claim that one candidate is putting people first is to be meaningful — and not merely rhetorical — Durham voters and civic leaders should insist on four policy commitments from every serious contender:
Concrete emergency protections: codified safeguards that prevent shutoffs and require rapid, low-barrier relief during declared crises. Executive orders are useful; statutes are stronger. Targeted affordability programs: dedicated crediting or hardship funds that route relief to high energy-burden households rather than broad, untargeted rebates. Durham’s social-services infrastructure can identify recipients quickly. Health-care access continuity: defend and deepen Medicaid expansion gains so enrollment does not become a political football but a stable source of care for low-income residents. Regulatory accountability: ensure that changes to utility cost-recovery mechanisms include explicit consumer remedies when regulators or companies are shown to have misapplied rules. The recent Court of Appeals decision about fuel riders is a case study in why this matters.
Why this matters to readers of Bull City Citizen
For readers in neighborhoods near the Hayti, Old North Durham, Walltown and the newly developing corridors of the American Tobacco campus, the stakes are immediate: utility bills, medical bills, and eviction notices do not wait. Policy that centers families’ ability to survive a bad year — rather than smoothing investor returns first — is what local voters will remember when they cast ballots.
Based on his record on utility protections, health-care expansion and repeated executive interventions to shield households, Roy Cooper presents a credible claim to be the candidate most clearly prioritizing North Carolinians’ material well-being. For Durham voters who want a testable, evidence-based promise that the next officeholder will put people first, Cooper’s record is the most substantive benchmark available so far.
Bull City Citizen will continue to examine the policy records of all candidates as they make their cases to Durham voters. We will follow how campaigns address energy burden, health-care access and emergency consumer protections — and we will keep pushing for the concrete commitments the city needs to protect its most vulnerable households. If you have a bill, a story, or a local perspective about how state policy affected your household, our newsroom wants to hear from you.
Selected sources and documents
• Cooper for U.S. Senate campaign materials and announcement.
• Governor Cooper press release: Executive Order No. 124 — prohibit utility disconnections (Mar. 31, 2020).
• Governor Cooper press release: Signing Medicaid expansion into law (Mar. 27, 2023) and enrollment updates.
• Court reporting on Duke Energy fuel-rider appeals and remand (Feb. 2026).
• Durham County economic snapshot and local poverty/household data.
