What’s next for North Carolina under Roy Cooper’s leadership?

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — North Carolina will soon have a new governor now that Pat McCrory conceded the Governor’s race, but it could be a challenging first 100 days for Democrat Roy Cooper.

“I think the election was fascinating,” Radio host and political expert Chad Adams said.

Adams said North Carolina dealt with several controversial factors in this election.

“We don’t have a photo ID,” Adams said. “We can’t have a photo ID.”

He said there were issues even down to the very end of it.

“We still had some controversy mainly because Durham County turned their votes in at the 11th hour,” Adams said.

Those issues led to a month of protests, voter fraud accusations, but in the end, Governor Pat McCrory finally conceded acknowledging Democrat Roy Cooper’s win.

“I personally believe that the majority of our citizens have spoken and we now should do everything we can to support the 75th governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper,” McCrory said.

Democrats won the executive office and the supreme court, but Republicans have firm control over the General Assembly.

“So it’s going to be very difficult for Cooper to accomplish virtually anything unless he agrees with them, because there are veto proof majorities in both houses,” Adams said.

What do they agree on?

“Cooper ran on a platform of teacher pay,” Adams said. “This is something that Republicans have made great progress on so I think we’ll see teacher pay.”

An issue that may be a little more challenging is HB2.

“Certainly he would like to push HB2, but I doubt he’ll push it too hard, because he’s got to overcome the legislative majority which isn’t going to happen,” Adams said.

Regardless, North Carolina will soon have a new governor and Adams said McCrory handled that graciously.

“Also, if you notice as this happened, there were no riots, no burning of things in the streets,” Adams said. “Everything was kind of calm and smooth moving forward.”

Adams said the first thing to look for is what happens in this special legislative session coming up. That will be on Dec. 13.