Tue. Nov 26th, 2024

Jeff Jackson and Dan Bishop

Democrat U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson and Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop. (Photos: house.gov)

Democrat Jeff Jackson will be North Carolina’s next attorney general after defeating Republican Dan Bishop.

The Associated Press projected Jackson as the victor at around 11:30 p.m. As of 11:39 p.m., Jackson had 51.8% of the vote to Bishop’s 48.1% with more than 90% of precincts reporting, according to the State Board of Elections.

WRAL.com reported that Bishop called Jackson to concede around 11:00 p.m.

Both attorneys-turned-members of Congress, Bishop and Jackson represent neighboring House districts in the Charlotte area. Jackson serves the largely urban 14th Congressional District while Bishop was elected in the 8th Congressional District, representing a large swath of the Piedmont region including the Charlotte suburb of Concord.

The contest, expected to be one of the closest attorney general races in the country, drew an enormous amount of campaign spending. Jackson said in a video across social media that it is “the most expensive attorney general race in American history,” with more than $30 million spent by the two campaigns and outside groups as of the end of October.

The attorney general’s office has in recent years been a launchpad to the governor’s mansion in North Carolina. Gov. Roy Cooper served the state as attorney general for 16 years until his election as governor in 2017. His predecessor, Mike Easley, made the same jump in 2001, and Cooper’s successor, Josh Stein, became the Democratic nominee for governor after just seven years overseeing the state’s legal arm.

Despite periods of GOP control of the governorship and the legislature, North Carolina has not elected a Republican as attorney general in 128 years, when Zeb V. Walser — born a year after the end of the American Civil War — held the office. The last Republican to hold the post was James H. Carson Jr., appointed in 1974 only to lose his special election the following year.

Stein’s office made headlines with lawsuits against corporations like DuPont and Chemours for releasing harmful chemicals into the state’s air and water as well as drug manufacturers and marketing firms for their role in the opioid crisis. Under his tenure, the North Carolina Department of Justice has also made consumer protection a priority, most recently by going after price gouging in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

The North Carolina Department of Justice has at times been most impactful in the cases where it has chosen not to weigh in. Stein declined to defend state laws banning abortion after 12 weeks and the abortion drug mifepristone and recused himself from election disputes like a case charging that the state Senate map infringes upon the voting rights of Black North Carolinians. Stein has said he does not believe the attorney general is obligated to defend laws he views as violating the U.S. Constitution, a belief shared by Jackson.

Bishop, a longtime commercial litigator, pitched a sharp turn away from that approach, accusing Cooper and Stein of abusing the office’s powers to “spread liberal propaganda.” He campaigned on overseeing a harsher criminal justice system, particularly with regard to undocumented immigrants and offenses against police officers — and condemned Jackson for standing with Black Lives Matter protesters and immigrant advocates.

Jackson largely pitched a continuation of the work of his predecessors, promising an attorney general’s office that would continue to prioritize fighting consumer fraud, the impacts of the opioid epidemic, and environmental harm. He also vowed to probe corruption in government — a force he blames for gerrymandering in the state, including the 2023 redistricting map that relocated him to a heavily Republican district, which he called an act of “blatant political corruption.”

As a lawmaker, Bishop has been an active soldier in conservative culture wars and no stranger to controversy. During his time in the General Assembly, he authored HB 2, the 2016 “bathroom bill” that prohibited transgender individuals from using the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity, leading droves of businesses to temporarily cut ties with the state.

In Congress, he was among the lawmakers who voted against the certification of the 2020 presidential election, endorsing false claims of mass voter fraud put forth by ex-president Donald Trump. He carried this crusade into his campaign for attorney general, framing his pitch for North Carolinians around “election integrity.” In an October campaign stop in Greenville alongside the former president, Bishop urged Republican voters to build a lead that was “too big to rig.”

Jackson achieved a national profile in recent years as the “TikTok lawmaker,” garnering more than 2 million followers on the app by churning out videos explaining issues like abortion bans, the war in Ukraine, and the affordable housing crisis to a largely Gen Z audience.

In August, he introduced an anti-bribery bill alongside Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) seeking to prohibit payment of public officials for official acts after the U.S. Supreme Court found no prohibition on “gratuities,” though it has yet to see a vote in Congress. His campaign against political corruption stretches back to his earliest days in the General Assembly, where he introduced a 2015 bill in the state senate to set up an independent, nonpartisan redistricting committee — a proposal that never came to a vote.

Late in the campaign, Bishop sued Jackson for defamation over a “push poll” he linked to the latter’s campaign. The survey asked North Carolinians whether learning that “as a lawyer, [Bishop] represented people who stole money from the elderly” would change their vote — a claim Bishop denies but said was likely a reference to reporting on his legal career by The New Republic magazine.

Election night results are unofficial and vote totals will likely change over the coming days as local boards of election consider provisional, military, and overseas civilian ballots. The state Board of Elections is scheduled to meet Nov. 26 to certify the results.

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