The approach is reminiscent of the ‘windowless basement’ strategy Democratic leadership used in North Carolina in 2020.
On October 7, 2025, Senate Democratic candidate and former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper posted a selfie on X that included a middle-aged woman and the caption: “I wouldn’t be here today without all of you stepping up and supporting this campaign. Thank you for your support.”
The post was unremarkable in its content, except for the fact that Cooper had posted the exact same photo in a May 2024 photo dump for “Teacher Appreciation Week” while he was governor under an account that is now run by his Democratic successor, Josh Stein.
It’s of course not uncommon for politicians to repost old photos with constituents, supporters, or special interest groups when running a campaign. But the frequency with which Cooper’s campaign posts recycled photos is indicative of how little campaigning he’s done since announcing his Senate run.
Cooper is one of Senate Democratic leadership’s most prized recruits of the 2026 cycle given his experience winning statewide election in the red-leaning battleground, including multiple gubernatorial and attorney general races. The seasoned Democrat’s experience in both roles, along with his years of service in the state legislature, have given him nearly universal name recognition in the state ahead of what’s expected to be a very competitive Senate race. The party is expected to spend heavily on the contest: While North Carolinians favor Democrats in their gubernatorial and attorney general races, a Democrat hasn’t won a Senate election there since 2008.
This midterm cycle, the 68-year-old Democrat is running for retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis’s seat and is expected to face Trump-endorsed GOP candidate Michael Whatley, the former state chairman and Republican National Committee chairman, in next year’s general election.
Apparently content that he has already locked up the Democratic nomination, Cooper has kept his public appearances to a minimum since he formally launched his 2026 campaign in late July. Given the lack of new photo opportunities, Cooper’s campaign team has increasingly relied on old images when promoting his candidacy on social media.
On July 30, Cooper’s campaign account posted a photo with a veteran that he’d taken as governor in May 2024. In a Labor Day post celebrating “the hardworking people across North Carolina who make our state and our economy strong,” Cooper’s campaign used a photo he’d included in a “Happy New Year” photo dump the prior year. In a health-care focused September post accusing “DC Republicans” of cutting Medicaid to “give tax breaks to their wealthy friends,” the Senate hopeful’s campaign again used a recycled photo of the former governor and a constituent that was first posted online in December 2023.
Pressed about this curious strategy, a Cooper spokesperson said: “Governor Cooper has heard from small business owners in Chimney Rock concerned that the FEMA response led by Michael Whatley has left them behind, parents in Raleigh worried about skyrocketing health care costs caused by the Big Beautiful Bill Michael Whatley supports, and families across the state getting crushed by the cost of groceries and it’s clear that North Carolinians know he has their backs and don’t want a DC insider like Michael representing them.”
Since launching in July, the campaign has indeed made a handful of public appearances throughout the state, including at a North Carolina A&T football game, the state fair, a couple stops in Western North Carolina, the hardest-hit part of the state post-Hurricane Helene.
But his campaign schedule is light in comparison to many other 2026 Senate candidates. The bunker campaign strategy is reminiscent of Senate Democratic leaders’ approach to the North Carolina Senate race when Tillis was last on the ballot in 2020. In 2019, then-prospective Democratic candidate Jeff Jackson — a former congressman who is now the state’s attorney general — discussed how he’d told Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer he was going to do “100 town halls in 100 days” to get a pulse on the electorate ahead of a potential run.
“Wrong answer,” Schumer responded when the prospective Senate candidate pitched the leader on his grassroots strategy, Jackson later recalled at an event with supporters that was later reported by National Review. “We want you to spend the next 16 months in a windowless basement raising money and then we’re going to spend 80 percent of it on negative ads about Tillis.”
When Cooper does make a public appearance, his campaign team takes full advantage, sometimes reposting photos of the same event multiple times. On September 27, for example, Cooper posted a series of photos with volunteers in Western North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene ravaged neighborhoods in fall of last year, killing more than a hundred people. Cooper’s campaign account has since posted photos of the candidate wearing the same exact outfit on the same field on numerous occasion in posts with vague captions, including on October 10, October 11, October 14, and October 18.
His campaign’s social media is replete with several other instances of vaguely captioned posts with photos from his time as governor. That strategy explains his new account photo on X, which is currently a snapshot of him surveying hurricane damage – but a look at the governor’s social media archives reveals that the photo was taken in 2018 following Hurricane Florence.
Beyond the recycled photo strategy, it’s also notable how often the Cooper campaign has declined to comment on major political developments and policy debates in recent months, including on transgender-related issues, and the North Carolina supreme court’s recent rulings on COVID-era lawsuits. Cooper also took nearly two weeks to issue a statement via a spokeswoman about the violent murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on the Charlotte light rail in August before finally weighing in himself the following day.
“The murder of Iryna Zarutska is a horrible tragedy and we must do everything we can to keep people safe,” Cooper wrote in a September 9 social media statement. “Only a cynical DC insider would think it’s acceptable to use her death for political points, especially one who supported cutting funding to law enforcement in NC.”