The Republican nominee for North Carolina attorney general is suing the campaign of his Democratic opponent, alleging defamation based on a campaign "push poll" and a partisan media article that the lawsuit says was based on opposition research.
Republican Dan Bishop and Democrat Jeff Jackson are both lawyers and are current members of the U.S. House of Representatives. They are running to replace Democrat Josh Stein as North Carolina's attorney general. The election is Nov. 5, but early voting begins next week.
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Bishop and his campaign filed the lawsuit this month in Union County, citing defamation of his legal career. The lawsuit names Jackson's campaign, the North Carolina Democratic Party, DAGA North Carolina People's Lawyer Project, Democratic Attorneys General Association Inc., Dynata LLC and 10 unnamed North Carolina citizens.
"We look forward to its swift resolution," the Jackson campaign said in a statement to WRAL. "Mr. Bishop says he wants to be Mark Robinson's sidekick and we imagine this will have as much success as Mark Robinson's legal actions."
Robinson, the state's lieutenant governor, is the Republican candidate for governor. Robinson, who is running against Stein, has been embroiled in a number of controversies.
The lawsuit alleges that Dynata, a marketing research firm, conducted a political survey in late July. As part of the survey, the questioner asked: “Would you be more or less likely to vote for Dan Bishop for Attorney General if you knew that, as a lawyer, he represented people who stole money from the elderly?”
In the lawsuit, Bishop said he never represented people who stole money from the elderly.
WRAL reached out to Dyanta for comment.
The lawsuit alleges that the question "vaguely echoed defamatory statements" made in an article published by The New Republic magazine in June. In September, Bishop's attorneys sent a letter to The New Republic outlining their objections to the article. The lawsuit states that The New Republic made changes to the article published online but didn’t address all of their concerns.
In a statement Thursday, the Bishop campaign said it filed the lawsuit “to protect Congressman Bishop’s professional reputation against false and defamatory accusations the Jackson campaign or its allies were preparing to launch.”
The campaign pointed out that the lawsuit doesn’t target Jackson personally.
Bishop, a former state lawmaker, practiced commercial litigation in North Carolina from 1990 until 2019, when he was elected to Congress. He still has his law license and plans to return to practicing law, either as attorney general or in private practice.
The lawsuit claims that the campaigns of Stein and current Gov. Roy Cooper, who was attorney general for 16 years, "defamed their opponents' professional legal careers in mass communications in the final weeks of close election campaigns," alleging that the Jackson campaign has "laid groundwork to repeat this unethical and unlawful tactic" in the current campaign.
"The last two elected attorneys general in North Carolina have defamed their opponents' legal professions in the closing weeks of the campaign," Bishop told WRAL in an interview Thursday.
He added: "We detected preparations to do the same thing about my 30-year, frankly, distinguished legal career."
In 2014, Cooper settled a libel suit from the 2000 election. In 2022, a federal appeals court blocked enforcement of an elections law at the center of an investigation targeting Stein.
"We just wanted to get that on the record," Bishop said. "It's a warning, in fact. If that tactic is repeated again, if anybody knows anything me, we're not going to let that pass."
Jackson led Bishop 43% to 36% in a WRAL News Poll in September. But the poll found 21% of voters were undecided, more than enough to determine the winner. A WRAL News Poll in March found Jackson with a 41% to 40% lead.
Both candidates and outside groups are airing television ads in the race, which could see more than $30 million in total spending before Election Day.