The first time Josh Stein stopped by the tiny North Carolina town of Marshall after Tropical Storm Helene, in October 2024, the community was in ruins. Just weeks before, the storm surge had crested the bridge spanning the nearby French Broad River and spilled across Main Street, destroying everything in its path. “There’s not a single store that was open, just people shoveling mud, putting boards on windows,” recalls Stein.
After winning a heated but ultimately lopsided gubernatorial race, the Democrat has returned repeatedly to the area to gauge the recovery’s progress. “I see you all over the place,” Donna Ray Norton, a ballad singer who works at the Old Marshall Jail Hotel, tells Stein during a mid-July lunch visit. The hotel’s owner, Josh Copus, also greets Stein like an old friend. A local ceramic artist, Copus had opened the historic hotel three years before the storm and waded through floodwaters to salvage its artifacts. Now, he is happy to show Stein the restored premises, with its river views and the suites that were once jail cells. “I feel I’ve known you my whole life,” Copus tells the governor. “You’ve got a good, approachable energy, Josh.”
Stein’s skill at relationship building is part of an armory of political talents that has carried him to North Carolina’s highest office. The son of a celebrated civil rights attorney, Stein, 59, earned three Ivy League degrees and moves with ease through the state’s corridors of power. But his mix of down-home affability and charm also plays well with constituents and even some typically ornery Republican legislators.
In his race for governor, Stein benefited from both name recognition and a record of accomplishment as the state’s attorney general. He was also singularly fortunate in his opponent. Then-Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson wasn’t just a hard-right culture warrior; he was reported to have frequented porn sites, where he allegedly advertised his kinks, called himself a “Black Nazi,” and expressed support for slavery. Still, Stein ran an exceedingly clever race, allowing Robinson to self-immolate. In a highly gerrymandered state with an overwhelmingly Republican General Assembly, Stein outpolled Robinson by nearly 15 points, while Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump by three points.
Stein’s July visit to Marshall was part of a week-long swing through western North Carolina that combined a listening tour with tourism promotion. The first bill Stein passed as governor supplied an additional $500 million in relief to the region. He also has pushed for $11.5 billion in federal funding, a fraction of the $60 billion in storm-related damage.
But Stein wanted to do more. In June, he appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to talk up western North Carolina’s appeal. During his summer visit with his wife, Anna, Stein exuberantly declared the region was “open for business.” In a whirlwind of local appearances, he bought a ceramic lamp in Marshall, ate pizza and drank craft beer in Hot Springs, e-biked around Asheville’s battered but recovering River Arts District, hiked Catawba Falls, and went white-water rafting along the Nantahala River rapids—all chronicled on social media. “Had a blast,” he says.
Friends say Joshua Harold Stein’s inclination toward public service, a family inheritance, was evident early on. But it was hardly preordained that it would lead to the governor’s office—or perhaps beyond.
“He was very idealistic—that was clear,” says Caroline Marshall ’88, a friend since freshman year who is now managing director of Kroll Government Solutions. “He was always interested in what other people were thinking and how to make the world a better place.”
“I am really impressed by how committed he’s been, even from a young age, to justice and making sure everyone is treated well,” says Niklaus Steiner, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina who has known Stein since they were 5. In their tight-knit Chapel Hill neighborhood, Steiner says, they “just roamed around, playing Nerf football, running around the woods, biking around the neighborhood, until it was time to go home at 6.” In high school, Stein captained Chapel Hill High School’s state championship soccer team, becoming “the hero of the semifinal by scoring the winning goal in a penalty shootout,” Steiner recalls. Penalty kicks are “a very nerve-racking thing for a player to do. It’s just extremely high pressure. But, boy, he handles pressure well.”
“I always had the sense that he was going to do something public-focused or community-minded,” says high school friend Hampton Dellinger, a government watchdog attorney who was fired by the Trump administration in February.
Sports sealed their friendship. “He was great at soccer. I was pretty good at baseball,” Dellinger says. “But North Carolina is a basketball-crazed state, so Josh and I both had hoop dreams. We quickly realized the reality that we were both born, height-wise, for the bench. Josh got along with everyone. He was clearly brilliant, but he was never annoying. He was someone people gravitated to.”
Stein wasn’t initially certain what his future would hold: “I felt I sort of had to go to law school, but I wasn’t sure I was going to practice law. I wanted to do something that would help people have a better life, more opportunity.”
His father’s legacy and his Jewish upbringing loomed large. “I was raised that you’re on this earth to heal the world—that’s what tikkun olam means in the Jewish faith,” Stein said during a February event at the College’s Rockefeller Center for Public Policy. Adam Stein, the governor’s father, cofounded North Carolina’s first racially integrated law firm, which litigated major civil rights cases in the late 1960s and 1970s that are still taught in law school classes. The 1971 firebombing of the firm’s Charlotte office was featured in one of Stein’s gubernatorial campaign ads.
The family moved to Chapel Hill shortly afterwards, Stein says, motivated by his mother’s desire to study computational science. Jane Stein later conducted health sciences research, started a Spanish language school, and learned classical guitar, her son says. She still volunteers for the Democratic Party. Stein’s two older siblings have also pursued distinguished public-interest careers: His sister, Gerda, is a retired social worker and criminal justice reform advocate and brother Eric, a Yale-educated lawyer specializing in housing policy, helped launch the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Stein has Dartmouth roots: His maternal grandfather was class of 1933. “When I was 5 or 6, I went up there with him to one of his reunions,” Stein recalls. “And I got a little shirt that said ‘Dartmouth’ on it. This kind of underscores the importance of swag, because it plants a seed in your head.”
Stein majored in history and took several education courses. Since he “did not do well with Dartmouth’s cold,” he took full advantage of the College’s flexible scheduling options, spending terms in Mexico, Kenya, and Uganda. On campus, he became a leader of anti-apartheid protests, played soccer, and fashioned jewelry for friends. Caroline Marshall still has the earrings he made for her.
Betsey Tilson ’88 also became friends with Stein freshman year, and their professional paths later crossed in North Carolina. When she was the state health director and chief medical officer and he was attorney general, they collaborated on the issues of violence prevention, opioids, and vaping. “The way he was in college is the way he is now,” she says. “He’s generous with his friendships, he is fun, he has this great joie de vivre, he’s really smart, he’s intellectually curious, he’s mission- and value-driven.”
After graduation, Stein taught English and economics in Zimbabwe for two years. Then it was on to Harvard for a joint degree in law and public policy. After his second year of law school, he interned for Democrat Dan Blue, then speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives. Stein’s first jobs after Harvard focused on economic development and affordable housing, but he had “caught the political and government bug,” he says.
His father introduced him to a lawyer he admired, John Edwards, who was looking for help in a U.S. Senate run. Stein signed on as research director and ended up as campaign manager. Edwards became “the only [Senate] Democratic challenger to beat an incumbent in 1998,” Stein says with more than a hint of pride.
In 1999, Stein moved his family to Washington, D.C., where he served as Edwards’ deputy chief of staff. But he did not enjoy the rough, “elbows out” atmosphere of the U.S. Senate and left after two years. Edwards later became the 2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, but his 2008 presidential hopes imploded amid reports of an extramarital affair.
In 2001, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper hired Stein to run the department’s consumer protection division—a job he loved. “You go to work every day to protect vulnerable people who are getting taken advantage of in commerce,” Stein says. But he was interested in a broader range of issues. After eight years, he sought election to the state senate, winning a tough primary in a comfortably Democratic district. “I worked my tail off,” he says. “My dad and I knocked on probably 8,000 to 10,000 doors.”
When Cooper decided to run for governor, he backed his protégé to succeed him as attorney general. Stein was elected twice by margins of less than 1 percent. In that job, he demonstrated an ability to find bipartisan consensus, leading his fellow attorneys general in negotiating about $55 billion in settlements with drug companies, manufacturers, and pharmacies for their role in the opioid epidemic.
Former Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III, a Republican, says that during the opioid negotiations, he and Stein sometimes talked daily. “There’s a certain chemistry that has to develop. We had similar temperaments. We had one objective: to solve a problem,” Slatery says. “There were times when I think Josh could finish my sentences for me, and I could do that for him.” Dividing the settlement money among states “was a real balancing act,” he adds. “Josh was critical in bringing people to the table and convincing them this was a fair structure.”
Stein also eliminated the state’s backlog of untested rape kits, which had been the nation’s worst, and became the first attorney general to sue e-cigarette manufacturer Juul for unlawful marketing to minors, winning nearly $48 million for the state.
Stein’s 2024 gubernatorial race vaulted him to the national stage, including appearances on CNN’s State of the Union, cohosted by Jake Tapper ’91. To be fair, the real media draw was his opponent’s incendiary rhetoric on issues such as abortion, gay and transgender rights, and the Holocaust. Among Robinson’s gaffes was a condemnation of women for not being “responsible enough to keep your skirt down” to avoid unwanted pregnancies. Stein’s sleek negative ads spliced together clips of Robinson’s own speeches. “He was so extreme,” Stein says. “I was desperate to win so he wouldn’t be my governor.”
Stein had another piece of luck: The Democrats gained one seat in the North Carolina House of Representatives, breaking its GOP supermajority and giving Democrats the power to sustain Stein’s vetoes. That meant governing, in effect, had to be bipartisan. It also meant Stein would issue plenty of vetoes in his first year, including turning back GOP efforts to gut state diversity programs and loosen regulations on concealed handgun permits.
Republican State Sen. Jim Burgin has worked with Stein through the years on addiction treatment and other issues, but they’re not always in alignment. “He set up a task force to look at the legalization of marijuana in North Carolina. I completely disagree with it,” Burgin says. “So, about every week I send him an article, and we text all the time.” His other pet peeve is Stein’s disinclination to wear a tie on formal occasions. “I want him to always look like the governor. So, I’ve told him that,” Burgin says, “but we’ve laughed about it.”
An event honoring state employees at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College caps a long day of crisscrossing western North Carolina. After a brief speech, Stein mingles, chats, and poses with anyone who wants a photo with the governor. Nearly everyone does.
Earlier in the day, Anna Stein described how she and Josh met as interns at the North Carolina Department of Justice. After some mutual flirtation, the first move was hers: inviting him to watch a murder trial with her. “Men, including myself, sometimes can be slow to pick up signals,” Stein says in his defense.
He happened to be on a deadline that day, so he reluctantly declined. “I walked her, though, to the courthouse, bought her a lemonade, and we made plans to go for a walk the next Saturday,” he says. “We were both smitten pretty soon thereafter.” They have been married nearly 30 years and have three children: Sam ’21, Adam ’23, and Leah ’26. Anna, a lawyer with a master’s in public health, stepped down from her state job when Stein became governor but continues to work on issues including rehabilitation and reentry for incarcerated people and combatting mental health stigma and substance use disorders.
Meanwhile, Stein’s future looks bright. He is cochairing the bipartisan National Governors Association’s council of governors and starting to figure in 2028 presidential speculation, with The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake calling him “the brightest star of Democrats’ 2024 governor class.”
As one might expect, Stein dismisses such talk. He describes himself as “exceptionally close” to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, both potential Democratic presidential candidates. Stein says that his “very likely” aim is to run for reelection as governor in 2028. So far, he notes, he has served eight years in each of his prior government jobs.
That doesn’t mean Stein lacks ideas about what national Democrats need to do. “People keep asking, ‘Is there a secret to winning in a purple state?’ I don’t think it’s complicated,” he says. “You talk about issues that matter in people’s lives, and you have practical solutions to address those problems. If you deliver for people, so that their lives are a little bit better because of what you’re doing, voters reward that.” Not the jazziest of formulas, to be sure, but Stein’s career seems to prove it out.
“You can be in a super-blue state and go far to the left and do fine and win. But that’s not this country,” Stein says. “You’ve got to be able to talk and win Republican votes. You’ve got to be able to talk to unaffiliated voters and win some of their votes.” If you write off those voters, he says, “You’re never going to win in this country.”
Julia M. Klein, a former political reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
