RALEIGH — Before Roy Cooper was governor, before he was attorney general, before he was the Democratic front-runner for U.S. Senate, he was a first-time statewide candidate who put a false attack on television — then spent 14 years in court before paying for it.
In April 2014, Cooper settled a defamation suit over a 2000 Attorney General campaign ad that accused Republican opponent Dan Boyce of charging $28,000 an hour. The settlement, reported by WRAL, included $75,000, mediator fees, and a written apology. Cooper and campaign aide Julia White signed language calling Gene Boyce, Dan Boyce, Laura Isley, and Phillip Isley “excellent and ethical lawyers and honorable people,” and admitting: “To the extent the political TV ad in the 2000 election for Attorney General implied anything else, we were wrong and apologize.”
That apology is not ancient history. It is the clearest early marker of a habit North Carolina voters are seeing again in 2026: Cooper and his allies stretch an opponent’s history until the verb no longer matches the facts.
What the 2000 ad got wrong
Cooper’s first statewide race was the 2000 Attorney General contest against Dan Boyce. Late in the campaign, a TV spot claimed Boyce “charged $28,000 per hour,” said a judge found the fee “shocked the conscience,” and compared the figure to a police officer’s yearly pay.
The underlying fee fight was not Dan Boyce’s case. It belonged to his father, Gene Boyce. The $28,000-an-hour figure was not money paid; it was a judge’s calculation of a fee request. The court awarded a fraction of what the firm sought. Contemporaneous coverage in the Charlotte Observer and ABA Journal filled in the rest: Cooper’s own deposition said he personally scratched a draft line about “demanding $1,200 an hour” and wrote in “charged $28,000 per hour.” Boyce asked him to pull the ad. Cooper kept it on the air. Cooper won the race, then spent the next decade and a half fighting the lawsuit through appeals — including a failed bid for U.S. Supreme Court review — before settling as a public trial approached.
The settlement did not invent a new story. It put Cooper’s signature on the old one: the ad implied something false about honorable lawyers, and he apologized.
Morgan Jackson, who spoke for Cooper’s side when the settlement was announced, remains a senior strategist on Cooper’s 2026 Senate campaign. The personnel continuity matters less than the method: inflate the charge, force the opponent to spend time cleaning it up, and move on.
The 2026 version: “hired” a sex predator
This summer, a Democratic-aligned WinSenate PAC digital buy — about $2.3 million, according to NC Newsline — told viewers that Michael Whatley “hired” Harvey L. West Jr., a man who pleaded guilty in 2000 to five counts of taking indecent liberties with a child. A MeidasTouch host used the same verb while interviewing Cooper. Cooper’s own Substack transcript from Aug. 19 mostly said “appointed,” not “hired.”
“Hired” is the word that does the damage. It is also the word that collapses under scrutiny.
West was not Whatley’s employee. His highest-profile party role — chair of the Republican 1st Congressional District committee — was an elected position filled by district committee members, not a payroll hire. PolitiFact documented that an early Asheville Watchdog claim that Whatley “appointed” West as district chair was wrong; the reporter later acknowledged that part was incorrect. An elected district chair is not someone a state party chair can fire like a staffer. Whatley had no hire-and-fire power over that seat.
West also served on the GOP’s Plan of Organization Committee, a volunteer body. Party rules let the state chair appoint members. West has said Whatley appointed him in 2021 and 2024; Whatley has told WITN he did not appoint West. That dispute is real. Employment is not. Appointing a volunteer to a party committee — even a contested appointment — is not “hiring” a sex predator. Treating an elected district chair as if he were on Whatley’s payroll is worse.
West’s conviction is not in dispute. Neither is the fact that North Carolina Republicans later banned sex offenders from party office after the controversy broke. The dispute is whether Cooper’s orbit gets to rewrite volunteer politics into a hiring scandal. On the facts available, it does not.
Pattern, not coincidence
Put the two episodes side by side.
In 2000, Cooper’s campaign took a fee dispute about Gene Boyce and turned it into a charge that Dan Boyce “charged” $28,000 an hour — a number Cooper personally escalated in the script, according to Observer reporting of his deposition. Fourteen years later, he paid and apologized.
In 2026, Cooper’s allies take a convicted sex offender’s volunteer and elective party roles and turn them into a claim that Whatley “hired” him — language Cooper himself softens to “appointed” when he writes in his own voice. The punchline still travels. The correction does not.
Catawba First News has already covered both men in this Senate cycle: Whatley’s Dallas speech casting Cooper as a radical, and Cooper’s argument that Republicans enjoy a structural money edge. The Boyce settlement and the West ads are the same fight under different headlines: whether Cooper’s attacks can survive contact with the verbs that actually fit.
Dan Boyce forced a written apology. North Carolina voters can ask whether “hired” deserves the same fate — before Election Day, not fourteen years after it.
