North Carolina Dem Senate candidate added former Bloods gang member to criminal justice task force: report

Roy Cooper wants to be North Carolina's next senator, and it turns out one of the people he trusted to help shape the state's criminal justice policy was a convicted member of the Bloods. Not a reformed nonprofit worker with a distant record he's spent decades living down. A former gang member, tapped in 2020 to sit on a task force meant to advise the governor on how the state polices and prosecutes crime. That's not a footnote. That's the kind of detail that tells you what someone actually believes when nobody's watching.

Cooper has spent this campaign trying to sound like a reasonable, moderate Democrat who takes public safety seriously. Fine, that's the pitch every Democrat running in a swing state makes lately. But pitches are cheap. Appointments are choices. Somebody on his staff vetted this person, somebody signed off, and Cooper put his name behind it. If the goal was genuinely repairing trust between communities and law enforcement, there were plenty of credible voices to bring to that table. He picked someone with a Bloods conviction instead.

Maybe there's a redemption story buried in here somewhere, and maybe that person has turned his life around. We're not against second chances. But redemption and policy influence aren't the same thing, and voters deserve to know why a sitting governor thought gang membership was a qualification rather than a red flag. This isn't about demonizing anyone's past. It's about whether the guy asking North Carolina to send him to the Senate has the judgment to know the difference between reform and recklessness.

Cooper wants credit for being tough on crime now that he's running statewide. The task force pick suggests otherwise, and voters have a right to weigh that against the campaign-trail version of him.