William A. Cooper

Bill Cooper, the longtime TCF bank chief executive officer and Minnesota Republican Party chairman, died Tuesday February 14 2017. He was 73. As chairman of the state Republicans from 1997 to 1999, he unified a fractured party and helped it win control of the Minnesota House for the first time in years. He donated more than $200,000 to state GOP campaigns since 2005 and at least that much to federal campaigns. An outspoken conservative, Cooper took over the state party at a time when country-club Republicans were at odds with the moral conservatives who worked in the trenches. Party activists said he managed to unite the warring factions. Born in 1943, Cooper grew up in Detroit, Mich. His mother worked as a railroad accounting clerk, and his father died when he was young. Cooper worked as a Detroit police officer while earning an accounting degree from Wayne State University in 1967. After working as an auditor with Touche Ross, he took his first banking job as an assistant treasurer at Michigan National Bank. His career took him to Columbus, Ohio, where he served as president of Huntington Bank and as president of the American Savings and Loan Association. He came to Minnesota in 1985 to become chief executive officer of Twin Cities Federal, which became TCF. He transformed the failing savings and loan into a national bank and took the company public in 1986. Cooper retired as chairman and CEO in 2006 before returning in 2008 to lead the company until his retirement in 2015. He continued to serve as executive chairman until his death.