This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Last summer, North Carolina’s race for U.S. Senate was expected to be among the most exciting in the 2026 cycle. Thom Tillis, a Republican, had opted not to run for reelection. Donald Trump had recruited Michael Whatley, the former head of the Republican National Committee, to stand in his place. Roy Cooper, a former two-term governor, seemed like Democrats’ best and only hope to make the race competitive in a state Trump had won three times—and where no Democrat has won a Senate race since 2008.Today, other contests are attracting more attention, and North Carolina has been a bit of a snooze. It hasn’t yet been the billion-dollar election some observers predicted. Whatley, a first-time candidate, has struggled to gain traction, and Cooper has gone from last hope to strong favorite. Cooper’s team isn’t declaring victory yet. “This is going to be a two-to-three-point race at the end of the day,” his longtime strategist, Morgan Jackson, told me. “We know that it’s a 50–50 state and you win or lose on the margins.” But most forecasters rate the race as leaning toward a Cooper win.As the Democratic Party struggles to define its identity in the Trump era, Cooper’s purple-state success has drawn lots of attention. National press coverage has hailed Cooper’s campaign as “boring” (complimentary) and “normal.” That lack of intrigue comes as a relief to a party dealing with drama and outrage in many other races. Cooper hasn’t taken controversial political stands like Michigan’s Abdul el-Sayed has, and he doesn’t have the personal scandals of the erstwhile Maine candidate Graham Platner. Republican voters also haven’t found ways to call him weird like they have Texas’s James Talarico.It’s natural for Democrats to want to emulate Cooper’s success, but I’m skeptical that he offers any simple, transportable lessons. That isn’t to say that descriptions such as boring and normal are wrong. When I asked Jackson point-blank whether Cooper was boring, he didn’t exactly dispute the notion. “He’s a workhorse; he’s not a show horse,” he said. “He’s a steady hand. So voters don’t see him out there as a lightning rod.”Cooper’s first big asset is that he has a long relationship with North Carolina voters. He entered statewide elected office in the waning days of the Bill Clinton presidency, a stretch that ended only in January 2025, after two terms as governor. This means that any Republican candidate will struggle to define Cooper in their own terms.This longevity is also a product of Cooper’s cautiousness. Almost from the moment he became attorney general in 2001, he was expected to someday run for senator or governor. But he didn’t actually do so until 2016, when he eked out a win over incumbent Republican Governor Pat McCrory by a little more than 10,000 votes. He waited to jump into the Senate race until shortly after Tillis’s retirement announcement, which meant that he was likely able to scare off Republicans more formidable than Whatley. He also picked an extremely favorable cycle for Democrats nationally.Cooper’s caution and affability shouldn’t be taken for softness. Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University (of no relation to the candidate), sometimes jokes that Roy Cooper is like Mister Rogers, if Mister Rogers carried a switchblade. Andrew Dunn, a North Carolina writer and Republican operative, is less complimentary. “Roy Cooper has carefully cultivated a public persona as your friendly, easygoing grandpa who wears sweaters and talks quietly,” he told me. “That is far from his private persona. He is incredibly opportunistic and calculating.”As governor, Cooper used a range of tricks to promote his agenda. He waged a war of attrition against the Republicans who controlled the state legislature over Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. GOP leaders started out dead set against it; Cooper finally got the expansion passed in 2023, his penultimate year in office. He also wielded his veto more frequently than any past governor. (North Carolina was the last state in the union to give its governor veto power, doing so in 1997 via legislation championed by a young state senator named Roy Cooper.)After Republicans overrode some of Cooper’s vetoes, he led a push to break their supermajority and backed a successful primary challenge to a Democratic lawmaker who’d sometimes voted with the GOP. When Cooper was replaced in 2025 by his fellow Democrat Josh Stein, Raleigh Republicans professed relief at being able to deal with someone they viewed as more agreeable (or, a cynic might say, whom they thought they could more easily outflank).Contending with a unified Republican general assembly constrained Cooper on policy, but it may also have benefited him politically. Because Democrats have spent the past 15 years desperately trying to stave off conservative legislation, the party has had little room for internecine warfare. As a result, Cooper has sidestepped the kinds of battles that might have gotten him pigeonholed as a liberal or a moderate. (The only Republican governor in that stretch, meanwhile, lasted only one term, sunk in part by battles with GOP lawmakers.)Some conservatives also feel that Cooper gets a free pass from the press. This summer, Whatley’s campaign barred journalists from mainstream and left-leaning outlets from events, while Cooper’s campaign turned away staffers from two conservative outlets, but local coverage focused more heavily on Whatley.Dunn told me he still believes that Whatley could win. He takes some hope from a 1984 race, when popular former two-term Democratic Governor Jim Hunt ran against Senator Jesse Helms. “Helms spent millions upon millions of dollars trying to convince North Carolinians that they didn’t really like Governor Hunt’s record as governor,” Dunn said. “It didn’t work.” Early polls showed Hunt well ahead, but in the last phase of the campaign, Helms emphasized national issues and won. To do something like this, Dunn contends, Whatley could argue that Cooper will be another vote for the Democratic agenda, no matter how nice people think he is.But Helms also benefited from President Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1984; Whatley is a close ally of Trump, who is both not on the ballot and sinking in popularity. Jackson told me he believes that voters’ opinions of Cooper are already set anyway. “People see him as a genuine guy,” he said. “The reality is, Roy Cooper is as authentic as they come.” One argument for his authenticity might be how hard he is for Democrats to replicate elsewhere.Related:The Democrats’ biggest Senate recruits have one thing in common.What North Carolina and Roy Cooper can teach Democrats (From 2021)Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:Peter Wehner on the wrath of MAGASpencer Cox’s possibly delusional crusadeAmericans are spending luxury dollars for dive-bar service.Today’s NewsMore than 350 people have been killed and more than 1,300 remain missing after flash floods struck Nepal and China yesterday. The U.S. Geological Survey said that a glacial collapse and resulting debris flow triggered the flooding; Chinese authorities warned that a dam created by the landslide could breach and cause further flooding.Jurors began deliberating in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, who killed her three young children at their Massachusetts home in 2023. Clancy is charged with first-degree murder; her defense argues that she was experiencing postpartum psychosis.President Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. government to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America.” The move comes amid escalating tensions between the United States and Canada following the breakdown of trade talks and the addition of new tariffs.DispatchesTime-Travel Thursdays: For centuries, some have lamented the erosion of the South’s distinctive approach to etiquette, Annie Joy Williams writes.Work in Progress: Rogé Karma on why data centers are a distraction.Explore all of our newsletters here.Evening ReadJoe Raedle / GettyNot American EnoughBy Toluse OlorunnipaFor Carlos Alemán, the pinnacle of the dozen years since he became a U.S. citizen was the night in 2020 when he was elected to serve on the city council of Homewood, Alabama. One of the lowest moments came earlier this year, when he learned that some of the most powerful people in his state are attempting to ban immigrants like him from pursuing higher office.“It seems to be part of a project to reject anyone who’s not born in this country as not worthy or deserving of the full rights of citizenship,” Alemán, who was born in Nicaragua, told me.For most of American history, becoming a citizen has meant acquiring the right to participate in virtually all aspects of civic life, including voting, serving on juries, and mounting a campaign for any political office other than the presidency. But in Alabama and other states across the country, Republican lawmakers are now pushing to make an important distinction: Naturalized citizens, they argue, should not have the same right to serve in public office as someone born in the United States.Read the full article.More From The AtlanticDuncan Hosie: The Supreme Court isn’t interested in facts.Radio Atlantic: Bill Gates on the dangers of AIHow to lose $12 billion and still winCulture BreakLeft: © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society, New York. Right: © 2026 Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society, New York.Take a look. The usual story is that the painter Milton Avery mentored and then was eclipsed by his friend Mark Rothko. But their relationship—and Avery’s influence—was more complicated than that, Sebastian Smee argues.Reminisce. Tim Curry’s magic lay in his ability to be outrageous without being self-conscious, Tom Nichols writes.Play our daily crossword.Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.