Jim Cooper Net Worth 2025

What is Jim Cooper net worth?

Net worth	$16 million
Occupation	American politician
Date of Birth	June 19, 1954
Political party	Democratic
State	Tennessee

Jim Cooper net worth 2025: James Hayes Shofner Cooper is an American politician who has served as the U.S. Representative for Tennessee’s 5th congressional district. He is a member of the Democratic Party and the Blue Dog Coalition, and represented Tennessee’s 4th congressional district from 1983 to 1995. Jim Cooper net worth is $16 million.

Early life and Education

Cooper was born in Nashville and raised in Shelbyville, Tennessee. He is the son of former governor Prentice Cooper and his wife Hortense. His paternal grandfather, William Prentice Cooper, served as mayor of Shelbyville and speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives.

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 The Cooper family owns the River Side Farmhouse, built for his great-great-grandfather, Jacob Morton Shofner, in 1890; the Gov. Prentice Cooper House, built for his grandfather in 1904; and the 1866 Absalom Lowe Landis House in Normandy, Tennessee, all of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Cooper attended Montgomery Bell Academy, the Episcopal boys’ boarding school Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a member of the Alpha Sigma Chapter of the Chi Psi fraternity, received the Morehead-Cain Scholarship, and earned a B.A. in history and economics.

He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford, where he was a member of Oriel College and earned a B.A./M.A. in philosophy, politics and economics in 1977. In 1980, he received a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Cooper spent two years working for the law firm Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, LLP in Nashville, and then ran for Congress in 1982.

U.S. House of Representatives

In 1982, Cooper won the Democratic primary for the 4th district, which had been created when Tennessee gained a district after the 1980 census. The new 4th ran diagonally across the state, from heavily Republican areas near the Tri-Cities, Knoxville and Chattanooga to the fringes of the Nashville suburbs.

The district stretched across five media markets—the Tri-Cities (Kingsport, Johnson City, and Bristol), Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville and Huntsville, Alabama. Cooper defeated Cissy Baker, an editor in Washington for CNN and the daughter of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, with 66% of the vote.

Cooper was reelected five more times with little substantive opposition, running unopposed in 1986 and 1988. Before Cooper’s election, much of the eastern portion of the 4th had not been represented by a Democrat since the Civil War.

U.S. House of Representatives

When Thompson opted not to run for reelection to the Senate in 2002, 5th district Congressman Bob Clement  ran for Thompson’s seat. Cooper entered the 5th district Democratic primary along with several other candidates, including Davidson County Sheriff Gayle Ray, Tennessee’s first female sheriff, and state legislator John Arriola.

Cooper won the primary with 47% of the vote and went on to win the general election easily. The 5th, based in heavily Democratic Nashville, has long been one of the South’s most Democratic districts.

It and its predecessors have been in Democratic hands without interruption since 1875, and no Republican had made a serious bid for it since 1972. Upon his return to Congress, the Democrats gave him back his seniority.

Jim Cooper Net Worth

James Hayes Shofner Cooper is an American politician who has served as the U.S. Representative for Tennessee’s 5th congressional district. He is a member of the Democratic Party and the Blue Dog Coalition, and represented Tennessee’s 4th congressional district from 1983 to 1995. Jim Cooper net worth is $16 million.

His district includes a large part of Nashville. He is dean of Tennessee’s delegation to the House of Representatives.

Jim Cooper net worth Highlights

Caucus memberships

• Blue Dog Coalition
• New Democrat Coalition 
• Congressional Scouting Caucus (Co-Chair)
• Congressional Skin Cancer Caucus (Co-Chair)
• Congressional Wire Products Caucus (Co-Chair)
• Fix Congress Now Caucus (Co-Chair)
• 21st Century Healthcare Caucus
• Bipartisan Disabilities Caucus/Disabilities Advisory Caucus
• Congressional Arts Caucus
• Congressional HBCU Caucus
• Kurdish American Caucus
• National Guard and Reserve Components Caucus
• Servicewomen and Women Veterans Congressional Caucus
• Bipartisan Task Force Combating Anti-Semitism
• Gun Violence Prevention Task Force

Personal life

Cooper was married to Martha Bryan Hayes from 1985 until her death in 2021. They had three children. His daughter, Mary, was the student body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Cooper’s son Hayes attends the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his son Jamie graduated from the University of Georgia

Jim Cooper net worth 2025 is valued at $16 million.