Democratic Rep. Jeff Jackson announced Thursday that he would run for attorney general of North Carolina, a move that came one day after the GOP-dominated legislature passed a new gerrymander making his 14th District all but unwinnable for Democrats.
“I’ve been a prosecutor in a courtroom and a soldier in Afghanistan,” Jackson said in a launch video intercut with footage of him boxing an opponent. “And I am the last person corrupt politicians want to see as attorney general.”
Jackson did not directly mention fellow Rep. Dan Bishop, a Big Lie spreader and architect of North Carolina’s infamous “bathroom bill” who faces no serious intraparty opposition for the Republican nod. However, the Democrat excoriated his likely general election foe in August, saying that “as a prosecutor, I don’t think that anyone who supported overturning an election should be talking about law and order.” (Bishop was one of 147 congressional Republicans who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential race.)
Jackson likewise doesn’t have any notable primary opponents in sight as he campaigns to succeed Attorney General Josh Stein, who is the Democratic frontrunner to succeed term-limited Gov. Roy Cooper.
Republicans haven’t won an election for attorney general since 1896, though the party briefly held the post in 1974 when GOP Gov. James Holshouser appointed James Carson to fill a vacancy. (Carson lost the ensuing special election a few months later to Democrat Rufus Edmisten.) Republicans, though, are hoping that 2024 will be the year they take control of a powerful post that previous occupants, including Cooper, have successfully used as a springboard to higher office.
P.S. The likely Jackson-Bishop showdown would be the first time in nearly three-quarters of a century that two sitting U.S. House members have faced off in a general to become attorney general of any state. The last time such a matchup came about was in 1954, when New York Democrat Franklin Roosevelt Jr., who was the son and namesake of the 32nd president, campaigned against Republican colleague Jacob Javits. Javits won 51-48—the only Republican to win statewide in New York that year—and became one of the most prominent moderate Republicans in the country following his ascension to the Senate two years later.
