Forest is North Carolina’s lieutenant governor and the GOP’s nominee against Democratic Governor Roy Cooper this fall. As many as seven in 10 North Carolina voters approve of Cooper’s performance, and they seem to back both his decision to shut down North Carolina’s economy in mid-March and the slower, more cautious approach to reopening that Cooper has taken compared with Republican governors in the surrounding states of South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. Republicans in North Carolina have voiced concern about the mismatch in fundraising between Cooper and Forest.