RALEIGH, N.C. – Attorney General Roy Cooper sought another four-year term in Tuesday’s election, facing challenger Bob Crumley for the job of North Carolina’s top law officer.

Cooper, 51, is a Democrat seeking a third term. Crumley, also 51, is a Republican law firm executive from Asheboro.

While Cooper’s two predecessors each ran for governor after two terms, the 51-year-old former state legislator from Rocky Mount instead chose to seek another term as attorney general because, he said, there are “so many issues to tackle.”
 
Cooper pointed to his record during the past eight years, saying he fought meth labs, sued to protect North Carolina from out-of-state polluters and worked to keep the state’s children safe from Internet predators.

But his most publicized act during his latest term came in April 2007, when he tossed out the remaining charges against three Duke University lacrosse players falsely accused of rape. In declaring them innocent, he said at the time that no DNA supported the woman’s story.

Footage from that news conference was used in Cooper’s first campaign ad, which went on to say the attorney general helped modernize the state’s crime lab and added dozens of DNA experts.

Crumley has criticized Cooper for opening a new lab in Greensboro that doesn’t have the equipment to perform DNA testing, and said officials have told him it still takes several months for analysis of crime lab evidence to be returned to law enforcement.
 
Crumley has been involved in Republican campaigns since the 1970s, and he launched an unsuccessful bid for the state Senate in 2002. His law firm, Crumley and Associates, has 13 offices in North and South Carolina and focuses on auto accidents, Social Security and workers’ compensation cases.