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Roy Asberry Cooper III (born June 13, 1957) is an American attorney and politician serving since 2017 as the 75th governor of North Carolina. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 49th attorney general of North Carolina from 2001 to 2017 and in the North Carolina General Assembly in both the House of Representatives and Senate from 1987 to 2001.Cooper graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1979. He began his career as a lawyer and in 1986 was elected to represent the 72nd district in the North Carolina House of Representatives. In 1991, he was appointed a member of the North Carolina Senate, a position he held until 2001. He was elected North Carolina Attorney General in 2000 and reelected in 2004, 2008, and 2012, serving just under 16 years, the second-longest tenure for an attorney general in the state's history.
Cooper defeated Republican incumbent Pat McCrory for the governorship in a close race in the 2016 election. This election made Cooper the first challenger to defeat a sitting governor in the state's history. Before he took office, the Republican-dominated legislature passed bills in a special session to reduce the power of the governor's office. The legislature has overridden several of Cooper's vetoes of legislation. Cooper was reelected in 2020, defeating Republican nominee and Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest.