It’s easy to focus on the awful in the 2024 election, perhaps especially so in North Carolina. Extreme candidates occupy our ballots like never before, including in critical national and state races. It’s hard not to see those contests solely through the lens of the candidate you can’t possibly vote for, the one who’s a threat to something larger than just one office in one election.
This board has certainly been tempted to think that way about North Carolina’s race for attorney general. The Republican nominee, after all, is Dan Bishop, a candidate who in so many ways exemplifies the opposite of what an attorney general should be.
As North Carolina’s chief law enforcement official, he would be a leader who tried to overturn a free and fair election with a vote not to certify Arizona’s 2020 election results.
In an office tasked with protecting North Carolina’s citizens, he would be a leader who has a long, harsh history of discrimination . As a Mecklenburg commissioner, he spoke out against a county measure to ban discrimination against gays. He publicly advocated for North Carolina’s Amendment 1, which in 2012 made our state the last in the country to ban gay marriage before a court overturned it.
Most notably, Bishop also was the author of perhaps the most destructive bill in our state’s history. HB2 was a grab bag of discrimination that went far beyond bathrooms, and it did more damage to North Carolina and its economy than perhaps any single piece of legislation in the state’s history. Bishop, incredibly, shows no public remorse over his role in it, and he’s operated in similar grievance-filled fashion as a U.S. House member. Once a smart, promising conservative thinker, he has become little more than a disappointing, disapproving sneer.
But this race is certainly about more than “How could you think about voting for that guy?”
In Jeff Jackson, North Carolina voters have a strong choice. As a state lawmaker and member of Congress, Jackson has been a solid progressive but one who is willing to think and work across the aisle. (The non-partisan Lugar Center ranked him as one of the most bipartisan members of the U.S. House.). As a public representative, he has been refreshingly thoughtful and accessible, with a straightforward style and transparency that has such a broad appeal among voters that fearful Republicans gerrymandered away his chances of another term in Congress.
Jackson’s vision for the attorney general job is not dissimilar from AGs across the country, both Democratic and Republican. In an interview with the editorial board, he outlined the collaborative steps he wants to take with local law enforcement to continue the fight against fentanyl in North Carolina. He spoke of getting in front of the growing threat of Artificial Intelligence used to scam citizens. He wants to work with law enforcement on major felony cases including sex offenses, and he has reiterated the attorney general’s role in defending the constitutional rights of all citizens, regardless of party.
As for Bishop’s priorities and positions - those are a little harder to discern. His website is as much about his opponent as his own vision for the office. Good luck finding something on fentanyl or consumer fraud protection. Outside of a few references to crime on his site (his solution: ending “woke policies”), voters are left to wonder exactly what it is that Bishop plans to do if he were to win.
That uncertainty speaks to perhaps the largest difference between Jackson and Bishop. Agree or disagree on policy and focus, North Carolinians have an expectation of how an attorney general will operate. In Josh Stein and Roy Cooper before him, our state has benefited from AGs who have ably performed their constitutional duties while proactively protecting vulnerable North Carolina citizens. We didn’t agree with everything either Stein or Cooper did as AG, but each was mindful about operating within the norms of the office. There’s nothing about Jeff Jackson’s record or approach to public service that suggests he would be different.
With Dan Bishop, we’re just not certain. He denied a valid and fair election. He speaks partisan instead of policy. Will he merely be a conservative attorney general? Or will he bring his extremist worldview and legislative approach in ways North Carolina has never seen in the attorney general’s office?
We recommend Jeff Jackson for North Carolina Attorney General.
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