Charlotte dad and TikTok star: Could Jeff Jackson be NC’s next attorney general?

Jeff Jackson has quickly become a major-league millennial in his short political career.

In regularly recorded sit-down chats, the freshman congressman running to be North Carolina’s attorney general trades time he could use to talk about his Democratic Party to talk about how-to-play politics — the behind-the-scenes stuff regular folks don’t hear much about.

Millions have seen the videos he made at the kitchen counter inside his 4,400-square-foot home in southeast Charlotte.

Not too long ago, those numbers were much smaller.

Jackson, the 42-year-old Democratic nominee Nov. 5, moved to Charlotte at 29 with a law degree and “enough capital to last eight weeks,” he told The Charlotte Observer in an interview.

After an investment in a tripod and a series of happenstance events — including an arrest, a snow day and a military order — Jackson is running against a fellow Charlottean congressman: Republican Dan Bishop.

Jackson, a former prosecutor serving his first term as a U.S. congressman, faces the longtime business lawyer turned member of the conservative Freedom Caucus.

According to an August poll from The Carolina Journal, Bishop led Jackson by four points: 42% to 38%. But a different poll showed the same slim margin leaning the other way. A September SurveyUSA poll said 43% of voters lean toward Jackson, 36% lean toward Bishop and 21% were undecided.

The pair are now in campaign crunch time in the last two months to win over voters and a title that has historically preceded a move to the governor’s mansion.

Jackson has repeatedly denied having any plans to ever run for governor.

In 2011, when he moved to Charlotte and into an apartment in a former mill tucked behind a NoDa brewery, he had no plans to be a politician, he said during a recent debate with Bishop.

An FBI sting and a sweet deal

“I knew literally zero people in the city,” Jackson said, reminiscing about his move from Chapel Hill to the Queen City. “I just felt drawn to be here.”

He had no job, he said, but he trusted the universe.

It dealt him a 30-minute commute to the Gaston County District Attorney’s Office and Marisa Bell — a marketing director who became Marisa Jackson in 2012.

They moved into a home between Charlotte’s Plaza Midwood and Elizabeth neighborhoods, according to public records, and started raising three children — his stepson, Haden, 16, and his two youngest, Owen, 9, and Avery, 5. As assistant district attorney, Jackson prosecuted “violent criminals and drug traffickers” for three years, his team said.

In 2013, he prosecuted a man in a drug-related killing in Gaston County, which resulted in a first-degree murder conviction.

In 2014, as Jackson juggled “more than a hundred cases” as a prosecutor, he heard about the arrest that, unbeknownst to Jackson, would catapult him into politics.

Charlotte’s mayor, Patrick Cannon, was arrested on corruption charges in an FBI sting.

Dan Clodfelter, then an eight-term Democratic state senator and Oxford graduate known for an epic mustache and his high stature in a Republican-led Senate, took the abruptly vacant mayoral post.

Jackson and three others said they’d be interested in taking the newly vacant Senate seat in Raleigh. Just 49 Democrats voted in the 2014 special election. Jackson — who was involved in politics as Mecklenburg Democrats’ third vice chair — won the election with 25 votes.

Innkeeper Billy Maddalon, who served briefly on the Charlotte City Council, got 21 votes and former school board member Amelia Stinson-Wesley of Pineville got three.

Darrell Bonapart, an East Charlotte activist, was eventually eliminated during several rounds of voting. During early selections, Bonapart — who had only one nomination — needed a second to appear on the ballot. Jackson was his second nomination.

Jackson took over Clodfelter’s role to the end of term and ran unopposed in the next election, which locked him in for two years in Raleigh.

“Honey, I just lost my job,” he said into Marisa’s ear after officials declared him the winner of the month-long special election on a Saturday morning in May.

It was also their second wedding anniversary .

Posting in politics

So, he stepped back into private practice in 2014 at the law firm Womble Bond Dickinson.

Jackson worked on a few civil cases during his career, representing a man who was owed money from Holly Springs and its town manager; and a woman asking for a divorce, according to court records. After joining the state senate, according to court records, he represented Wells Fargo when it was a defendant in an insurance case.

Between filing motions and casting votes, he also started posting on social media.

His Twitter (now X) handle was first spotlighted when he was the only state legislator to show up for work on a snow day in February 2015. He got likes, follows, news stories and even a BuzzFeed article with “#snOMG” in the headlines as he tweeted about all the legislation he’d pass if he was in charge.

“This is going to be like Night at the Museum only at the end we’ll have a stronger middle class,” he tweeted.

But his early following sprouted from his millennial dad content as much as the political explainer content he’s now known for.

That came full circle in 2020, when Marisa, with a background in communications and a face familiar to followers , took over his reelection campaign after the National Guard ordered him to report for training. His competitive campaign against Republican Sonja Nichols was in its final weeks.

The campaign was Jackson’s “first real challenge,” he told the Observer in 2020 as he greeted early voters outside Myers Park High School three days before Election Day. District 37 had just dramatically changed shape after redistricting shaved off some Democratic-leaning areas of east Charlotte.

Nichols was a well-established philanthropist who, among other things, brought Oprah Winfrey to Charlotte and organized black-tie fundraisers for military veterans.

Jackson outraised her $268,000 campaign by $700,000 and won 55% of the votes while he was training for three weeks. Jackson, now a major with the National Guard, has been in the military for 22 years.

Jackson was a sophomore studying for his bachelors and masters in philosophy at Emory University when he looked up at a television and saw two planes hit the Twin Towers. Within a year after September 11, 2001, which was one day before his 19th birthday, he finished his courses and in 2002 drove over to the Army Reserve’s recruiting office, stopping first at the Subway next door.

He got a meatball sub and sat in one of the green booths “thinking things over,” he wrote in a 2021 Facebook post. Then he enlisted.

Jackson in 2005 served a year in Afghanistan at “a remote desert outpost a few hours north of Kandahar,” he wrote in the post. There, he learned a lot about people, he said, and “how much you can communicate through a solid language barrier.”

His first documented attempt at communicating the lesser-known realities of America’s government was an email list he started on his fourth day in Afghanistan. Messages were addressed to ”Dear Friends and Family.”

Soon, those were published in Emory’s student magazine : E-mails home from Afghanistan

He told tales of carrying a soccer ball around, skidding the ball across an Afghanistan desert to barefooted kids, and also of attacks on his base camp.

The soccer ball was a way to cut through the terror, to connect with others, he wrote.

“It’s amazing how so much of politics and geopolitics fades away as soon as you produce a soccer ball,” Jackson said in an interview.

He received his law degree from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 2009. Now, 19 years later, Jackson finds himself making decisions on which program to run ads on (Wheel of Fortune? Jeopardy!? NCIS?) and what to say in his allotted seconds.

Head-to-head on homefield

Republican opponent Bishop has poked at Jackson and his brand.

In June, the two debated not far from their respective homes at a North Carolina Bar Association conference in Charlotte. The city they share is just about the only thing they have in common.

The debate with an audience of mostly lawyers remains the main showdown between the TikTok famous congressman and his conservative opponent.

On stage, Bishop challenged Jackson’s claim that he “tried more than one hundred cases” as a prosecutor.

Citing court records, Bishop said Jackson worked on just “28 traffic cases, 43 misdemeanor pleas and two felony pleas.” Bishop said he tried just one low level drug felony case — then Jackson interrupted him.

“Dan, you think that’s how it works at the district attorney’s office?” he asked.

Bishop interjected.

“I’d be on the defense about this, too. Spending three years taking pleas in court does not make you a practicing lawyer in a way you that can handle the complex work of the Attorney General’s Office,” he said.

Jackson said he was “swamped with cases” in Gaston County and questioned what system Bishop used to pull those numbers. Jackson prosecuted major sex offense and domestic abuse cases, had a dozen jury trials and worked on several hundred bench trials, he said.

“And you have had zero. Ever,” Jackson told Bishop. “So take a step back.”

Posing for politics?

Larry Shaheen, a Charlotte lawyer and Republican political advisor, says Bishop at least is predictable.

Jackson’s bipartisanship is really nonpartisanship, Shaheen told the Observer.

Jackson has ambition to push his name up the ladder, Shaheen said, and he’ll flip flop on issues in order to reach the top rung.

In March, Jackson faced waves of backlash when he voted for a bill many saw as an attempt to ban TikTok — Jackson’s bread and butter. The bill passed the House after officials said the Chinese government gained data through the app and was spreading propaganda to Americans through TikToks.

“It was difficult because I didn’t agree with every part of the bill,” Jackson told The Charlotte Observer. “But I take national security seriously, and allowing the government of another country to potentially control the information that half our country sees every day is a serious risk.”

Jackson told the Observer he did not regret his vote.

That vote, Shaheen said, showed Jackson’s flip-flopping tendencies.

“People might not like Dan Bishop, but at least you know what you’re going to get,” Shaheen said.

During his congressional race, Politico reported, even some Democrats called Jackson a “show horse” and referred to him as “Baby Jesus” while Republicans continued questioning whether he was more interested in political ambition than doing the work of Congress.

Democratic Sen. Graig Meyer, representing Orange, Person and Caswell counties in the state Senate, has a political career timeline that lines up with Jackson’s.

“Jeff always clearly had his ambition set on being a political climber,” Meyer said.

The snow day tweets were the first signs, and Jackson has since disguised his personal agenda with a nonpartisan brand, he said. Meyer, and other Democrats, want leaders who will “lift all of us… and give us a stronger brand, as a team in a state that’s this closely divided.”

North Carolina is often thought to be a “purple state,” but its voters haven’t backed a Democratic candidate for president since Barack Obama in 2008. Before that, it was Jimmy Carter in 1976. But margins are shrinking.

“The fact that he’s being criticized for ambition, even by some Democrats, shows how polarized our politics are these days,” said North Carolina Democratic state Sen. Julie Mayfield, Jackson’s former seatmate representing Asheville and Buncombe County.

Jackson asks real questions, said Mecklenburg District Attorney Spencer Merriweather, and he does something with the answers he gets.

“There’s a lot about our system that can lead people to harbor suspicions about anyone with this kind of ambition,” Merriweather said, “but never in my interaction with him have I felt like he’s doing it for the wrong reasons… and writing him off as a TikTok star is unfair.”

“Prosecutors and trial attorneys are only as good as their evidence,” Merriweather said. “Jackson knows that people risk their lives to gather that evidence, and he knows that the justice system at times… can be capable of infringing upon people’s civil liberties.”

Jackson’s platform

Jackson has maintained that the state’s next attorney general will need to “defend our kids from fentanyl and keep them safe online.”

Major cities like Charlotte feel the heightened pains of the fentanyl crisis. He was a prosecutor in Gaston County during the epidemic’s first phase — the prescription opioid epidemic.

Then came heroin, and, now, here’s fentanyl.

“It’s a mass poisoning,” he said. “We need to re-fund our drug courts that were largely defunded about a decade ago. We need to acknowledge that medicated assisted treatment is the best way to help people beat their addiction.”

In an interview, Jackson said attorneys general should “stand between the people of the state and those that mean them harm.”

“It’s not about culture wars,” he said, referencing Bishop’s stances. “It’s just about doing what’s right.”

Jackson said he wants to “go after scammers who target our bank accounts, and corporations who break the rules and pollute our water.”

The attorney general will also need to listen to what local law enforcement says Charlotte needs: more programs and activities to keep children out of trouble.

“Charlotte can get a little bit of the short end of the stick there just because of the sheer amount of youth violence and youth crime issues that we have going on here,” Jackson said.

In Charlotte last year, more shots were fired — and shootings involving teenagers went up.

Jackson said state officials have made it “pretty clear that we are not on the top of their list.”

“There are downstream consequences for that,” he said.

A fiery race, doused?

While Jackson’s public pages reach millions across the country, he must now refocus on North Carolina — and the congregation of voters in Charlotte.

“Seventy days out from the election, my opponent and I do not exist to most of the voters in the state,” Jackson said in an August TikTok with his classic kitchen backdrop: white cabinets over granite countertops, a wooden bowl to the left of his head.

“Most of them don’t know my name or his.”

Years ago, before the two had some “very heated public debates” across stages and screens, Jackson and Bishop talked over a coffeehouse table.

Jackson recalled sipping his usual — black coffee, small — with Bishop across from him when they were state senators, he said.

They talked for about 30 minutes, Jackson said, and they haven’t ordered together since.

Correction: Some of Jeff Jackson’s civil case work happened prior to him joining Womble Bond Dickinson. This story has been updated.