Bill Cobey

Who is Bill Cobey?

William Wilfred Cobey, Jr., known as Bill Cobey, is chairman of the North Carolina State Board of Education and a former one-term Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from North Carolina.

Cobey was born in Washington, D.C. and reared in the suburb of University Park in Prince George's County, Maryland. His father, William W. Cobey, Sr., was the athletic director for the University of Maryland from 1956 to 1969. Cobey is a graduate of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry. Cobey also earned an M.B.A. in Marketing from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and an M.Ed. from the University of Pittsburgh.

Cobey originally worked as a bank administrative assistant and then as a chemical salesman. In 1968, he became, like his father, an athletic administrator. From 1976 to 1980, he was athletic director at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the early 1980s, he was the president of his own corporation, Cobey & Associates.

In 1980, Cobey was the Republican nominee for North Carolina Lieutenant Governor. In 1984, he was elected to represent North Carolina's 4th congressional district in the U.S. Congress. However, he was defeated in a bid for re-election in 1986 by the Democrat David Price. After serving in Congress, Cobey joined the administration of North Carolina Governor James G. Martin, first as Deputy Secretary of Transportation and then as Secretary of the Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources. After serving as town manager of Morrisville, North Carolina, he did government relations consulting for Capitol Link, Inc.