Cooper was scathing in his assessment of former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong's shameful and willful mishandling of the case of three Duke athletes falsely accused of rape by an exotic dancer.

Small wonder that Cooper, a Democrat running for a third term as attorney general, reran the moment in his first campaign commercial. As sad an occasion as it was for Nifong, it was one of Cooper's finest, the culmination of a thorough, 12-week investigation that his office handled coolly and professionally.

But his record in office neither begins nor ends with the lacrosse case. . .

Cooper, 51, actually worked with local law enforcement to establish an SBI crime lab for the Triad in Greensboro. The 10,000-square-foot lab opened in July, serves 12 counties and is expected to handle 6,000 cases per year. . .

Cooper also has done a good job stemming the epidemic of meth labs in the state, a cause he aggressively took on several years ago.

He has added his office to a national electronic database of information about gangs.

He has taken an aggressive look at charges of price-gouging by gas stations throughout the state.

And he has increased arrests of online sexual predators. . .

But Cooper is the clear choice based on the breadth of his experience and the quality of his record.

Asheville Citizen-Times on Attorney General election

"Under Cooper’s leadership, the state has made major inroads on a variety of consumer fraud issues, technological upgrades on items such as the SBI Crime Lab, gangs, online predators and even environmental issues, where Cooper has doggedly pursued solutions to out-of-state pollution crossing into North Carolina. Broadly speaking, the attorney general serves as the state’s chief law enforcement officer."

Charlotte Observer: Roy Cooper for attorney general

". . .we believe Cooper’s steady leadership and his environmental and consumer protection ethic have served North Carolina’s people well. We recommend Roy Cooper for attorney general."

Winston-Salem Journal calls Cooper pick one of the "easy choices"

"Cooper has been a solid attorney general for eight years, and a good public servant for many more."