North Carolina Democrat U.S. Senate candidate and former Gov. Roy Cooper was forced to pay $75,000 and issue a formal apology to a Republican opponent in his first statewide campaign to settle a defamation lawsuit.
After serving 14 years in the North Carolina General Assembly, Cooper set his sights on becoming the state’s Attorney General in 2000. With the race considered to be close, Cooper’s campaign — led by the same consultant in this year’s race, Morgan Jackson — decided it needed to “hit Boyce and hit him soon.”
Not only that, Cooper personally made the false claims in the attack worse and said so himself in a deposition. From a Charlotte Observer report:
Cooper said in the deposition that he scratched out “demanding $1,200 an hour” and wrote in “charged $28,000 per hour.” The ad told voters that a judge said the fee “shocked the conscience.” The hourly fee, the ad went on to explain, was more than a police officer earned in a year. The commercial was broadcast across the state in the days leading up to the election. Boyce’s campaign urged Cooper to stop running the ad; it didn’t. Boyce lost the race, winning 46 percent of the votes to Cooper’s 51 percent.
According to Cooper’s deposition, it was he who took a draft campaign ad accusing Republican opponent Dan Boyce of “demanding $1,200 an hour,” scratched it out, and replaced it with the explosive claim that Boyce had “charged $28,000 per hour.”
The ad wasn’t true, and Cooper knew it.
The case referenced in the defamatory ad had been handled by Boyce’s father, Gene Boyce. The elder Boyce was never paid $28,000 an hour. The figure came from a judge’s calculation and he had been awarded a fraction of it. The underlying lawsuit had actually resulted in more than $1 billion being returned to North Carolina taxpayers.
Cooper fought the lawsuit against him and the case spent more than a decade in both state and federal courts. Not wanting to take accountability for his own actions, Cooper unsuccessfully asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf. But as the case finally approached a public trial in 2014, Cooper caved.
In the settlement, Cooper paid $75,000, mediator fees, and delivered a written apology to the Boyces.
The apology stated: “Gene Boyce, Dan Boyce, Laura Isley, and Phillip Isley are all excellent and ethical lawyers and honorable people. To the extent the political TV ad in the 2000 election for Attorney General implied anything else, we were wrong and apologize.”
Gene Boyce later sought to have Cooper’s conduct independently investigated as a potential ethics matter, arguing the North Carolina State Bar had a conflict because Cooper served as its attorney. The State Bar was successful in dismissing Boyce’s complaint on standing grounds rather than allegations of misconduct.
The same team behind the dishonest and defamatory ads have powered Cooper to six statewide wins, seeking to make it seven with the Senate campaign against Republican Michael Whatley.
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