Two U.S. House members are running for North Carolina attorney general

North Carolina’s next attorney general will be one of two outgoing members of Congress who represented the Charlotte area on Capitol Hill and previously in the state Legislature.

Both Democratic U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson and Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop are lawyers and active fundraisers. Each argued that his opponent was too radical to become the state’s top law enforcement official on Nov. 5.

The winner will succeed two-term Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee for governor. Democrats have dominated the position—a Republican has not been elected attorney general since 1896—even as the GOP has performed well in other races across the state for decades. In both 2016 and 2020, Stein defeated his Republican opponent by fewer than 25,000 votes.

This fall’s campaign has focused largely on who can best represent the nation’s ninth-largest state in court and keep its communities safe. While State Bureau of Investigation data shows North Carolina’s violent crime rate was higher in 2023 than it was a decade ago, it was essentially unchanged from 2022.

The two candidates and their allied PACs were expected to spend at least $31 million combined on television and online advertising during the general election campaign, according to AdImpact, which tracks campaign spending. Of the 10 attorney general elections taking place across the United States next month, North Carolina’s is among the most closely watched.

The Attorney General is charged with representing the state in court and defending the work of local district attorneys in criminal appeals. Attorneys general also make legislative recommendations to the General Assembly and have sued specific industries for damages in the past, including tobacco companies, pharmaceutical companies and social media companies.

The fact that two members of the U.S. Congress are vying for state government positions reflects the office’s growing influence and the increasingly partisan role state attorneys general play when it comes to going to court to support or oppose federal government policies.

Jackson is an Afghanistan War veteran and National Guard lawyer who has amassed a large social media following and was elected to Congress in 2022. He talked about his experience as a prosecutor – he worked as an assistant district attorney in Gaston County, handling various types of cases. affairs, and his commitment to performing his duties impartially make him the most qualified candidate.

“Essentially, this job is about protecting people from those who want to harm them,” Jackson said in a recent interview. “I’ve been doing this my entire career as a soldier and as a prosecutor. That’s why I want to become attorney general.”

Bishop, a longtime business attorney, former Mecklenburg County commissioner and state legislator, joined Congress in 2019 and is a strong supporter of Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump.

Bishop downplayed Jackson’s legal history as an assistant prosecutor and emphasized that he estimates he has more than 400 appearances in state and federal courts.

“I have extensive and complex experience with the North Carolina court system,” Bishop said in an interview. “He’s never had anything like this in his career.”

Jackson said that if elected, he would fight the fentanyl overdose epidemic and crack down on scammers who are now using artificial intelligence techniques to defraud consumers.

Bishop accused Jackson of having “an extensive record of being soft on crime and hostile toward police.” He said North Carolina needs to “restore law and order” and that he will work to stop what he considers liberal-leaning district attorneys who are not doing so.

The position became a springboard for gubernatorial bids: Outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper served as attorney general for 16 years. In recent years, Cooper and Stein have stopped defending state laws pushed by Republicans that they deemed unconstitutional.

Jackson said in a recent interview that Stein was right to refuse to defend provisions in state law that restrict medication abortions and dictate what a doctor must do before prescribing abortion pills.

But Bishop argues that Stein’s motive for not defending state laws passed by the GOP-controlled General Assembly is to advance his political career – and he argues Jackson would have done the same if he had been elected.

Jackson and Bishop served together in the state Legislature, where Bishop spearheaded a 2016 law that would have barred cities from passing new anti-discrimination ordinances and required transgender people to use public restrooms that match the gender listed on their birth certificate.

Jackson did not seek re-election to Congress this fall after the General Assembly redrawn legislative maps to place him in a heavily GOP district.

Jackson and his allies also noted Bishop’s support for Republican Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson for governor, especially after a CNN report alleging Robinson posted racially and sexually explicit posts on a porn site’s message board. Robinson denied the allegations.

Asked if he still supported Robinson, Bishop said he was focused on winning the attorney general election and that “any issues related to the governor’s race remain between Mark and the voters.” But Jackson said it was “absurd” that Bishop “can’t bring himself to say a single critical word” about Robinson.

Earlier this month, Bishop filed a defamation lawsuit against the Jackson campaign and others, alleging that at least some of them were to blame for a political poll that asked whether a voter would be more or less likely to vote for Bishop if he “represented the people who stole money from old people.” Bishop says he has never represented such people. Jackson’s campaign expects the lawsuit to be unsuccessful.