Roy Cooper’s Campaign Playbook Started With a $75,000 Defamation Settlement

Roy Cooper wants you to trust him with a U.S. Senate seat. But before North Carolina voters hand him that kind of power, they ought to know what happened the first time he went after statewide office. It’s a story about lies, defamation, and a politician who fought accountability for more than a decade before finally coughing up seventy-five thousand dollars and a written apology.

Back in 2000, Cooper was running for Attorney General. The race was tight, and his campaign guru Morgan Jackson decided they needed to “hit Boyce and hit him soon.” Dan Boyce was the Republican standing in Cooper’s way. So Cooper’s team drafted an attack ad accusing Boyce of “demanding $1,200 an hour” in legal fees. But here’s where it gets interesting. Cooper himself grabbed a pen and scratched that out. He replaced it with something far more explosive: that Boyce had “charged $28,000 per hour.”

Twenty-eight thousand dollars an hour. Let that sink in for a second.

The ad went on to claim a judge said the fee “shocked the conscience” and helpfully noted this hourly rate exceeded what a police officer earned in a year. It was a devastating political attack. It was also completely false, and Roy Cooper knew it.

The case referenced in the ad had actually been handled by Dan Boyce’s father, Gene Boyce. The elder Boyce never received anywhere close to $28,000 per hour. That figure came from a judge’s calculation, and he was awarded a fraction of it. The underlying lawsuit had actually returned more than a billion dollars to North Carolina taxpayers. But facts don’t win close elections. Attack ads do.

Boyce’s campaign begged Cooper to pull the commercial. He refused. The ad kept running across the state right up until election day. Cooper won with 51 percent of the vote. Boyce lost with 46 percent.

You know what happened next? The Boyces sued for defamation. And Roy Cooper spent the next fourteen years fighting that lawsuit with everything he had. He dragged the case through state courts and federal courts. When things weren’t going his way, he even asked the U.S. Supreme Court to bail him out. They declined.

Finally, in 2014, with a public trial looming, Cooper folded. He paid the $75,000 settlement plus mediator fees. More importantly, he delivered a written apology that stated Gene Boyce, Dan Boyce, Laura Isley, and Phillip Isley were “all excellent and ethical lawyers and honorable people.” The apology admitted that “to the extent the political TV ad in the 2000 election for Attorney General implied anything else, we were wrong and apologize.”

Think about that timeline. Cooper lied in 2000. He fought admitting it until 2014. That’s fourteen years of legal wrangling to avoid taking responsibility for something he did with his own pen during his own campaign.

Gene Boyce later tried to get Cooper’s conduct investigated as a potential ethics matter. He argued the North Carolina State Bar had a conflict of interest because Cooper served as its attorney. The State Bar managed to dismiss the complaint on standing grounds rather than addressing the actual misconduct allegations. Convenient.

Here’s the part that should worry North Carolina voters most. The same consultant who masterminded that dishonest attack ad, Morgan Jackson, is still running Cooper’s campaigns. That team has powered Cooper to six statewide victories. Now they’re gunning for number seven with Cooper’s Senate run against Republican Michael Whatley.

This isn’t ancient history. This is a pattern. When the stakes are high and the race is close, what does Roy Cooper do? His own deposition testimony answers that question. He personally made false claims worse. He refused to pull a dishonest ad even when confronted. He spent fourteen years fighting accountability before finally admitting wrongdoing.

The free market of ideas depends on honest debate. Limited government requires leaders who tell the truth. Individual liberty means nothing if those in power will say anything to get elected and then hide behind lawyers for a decade and a half when caught.

Roy Cooper wants North Carolina to send him to Washington. But his first statewide campaign shows exactly what kind of politician he is when nobody’s watching and victory hangs in the balance. He’s the kind who reaches for a pen and makes the lie bigger.

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