Democrat Jeff Jackson will be the state’s next attorney general, holding off Republican Dan Bishop in a tight race between sitting members of the U.S. House that attracted tens of millions in spending.
The two were running to replace Attorney General Josh Stein, who won the race for governor on Tuesday. Bishop called Jackson to concede shortly after 11 p.m., and Jackson delivered a victory speech around midnight.
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"To every person in this state, whether you voted for me or not, it will be an incredible honor to serve as your next attorney general and I will give this job everything that I've got," Jackson said.
With all precincts reporting, Jackson led by 2 percentage points, or about 147,000 votes, according to unofficial results from the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
"The Attorney General's job is to be a shield for those in harm's way, whether it's violent crime, folks pushing fentanyl into communities, scammers going after your bank account, people polluting the air or the water," Jackson said. "It will be my job to stand up to them on your behalf."
The past five attorneys general have run for governor, including current Gov. Roy Cooper and Josh Stein, who replaced Cooper as attorney general in the 2016 elections and will now replace him as governor.
Jackson, 42, currently represents a Charlotte-area district in the U.S. House of Representatives as does Bishop. Before that he was a member of the state Senate.
Jackson ran “as basically a normal person,” as he said in one ad, seeking to paint Bishop as an extremist who should not be trusted in the role of attorney general.
Bishop is best known as the lead author of the 2016 law colloquially known as HB2 that banned cities from enacting pro-transgender local ordinances and led to a national boycott of North Carolina.
The state has not elected a Republican attorney general for more than 125 years.
"I'm disappointed I have fallen short," Bishop said in a statement to supporters. "For them, I was eager to lead the restoration of law and order in North Carolina, to be a champion for the men and women of law enforcement who richly deserve one and to reinvigorate the NC DOJ to pursue the law and justice rather than ideology."
Jackson, now a major in the Army National Guard, enlisted in the U.S. Army after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He served in Afghanistan at a remote desert outpost with about two dozen Americans, he said, where as a “low-ranking soldier” he participated in “missions into pretty hostile parts of Afghanistan” in 2005 and 2006. Jackson said there was lots of civil service work, as well — drilling wells, building schools and passing out supplies.
He said that service has influenced his political career.
“Serving in the military is about working in small teams in order to accomplish a mission,” Jackson told WRAL previously. “And you get so much practice with that, that you become pretty good with being thrown into a team, figuring out what people’s strengths are and how to use those strengths and then being very mission focused after that.”
Jackson attended law school on the GI Bill and worked as an assistant district attorney in Gaston County from 2011 to 2014. Jackson said he started on speeding and drunk-driving cases but worked on murder, sex offense and drug trafficking cases before he left for the state Senate.
He was elected to Congress in 2022, but his Democratic district was recently redrawn by state lawmakers into a safe Republican seat, won Tuesday by state House Speaker Tim Moore.
Stein has campaigned this year by pointing to his record as attorney general, including using the office to target pharmaceutical companies over the opioid epidemic, big tech companies over antitrust violations and vaping company JUUL over marketing to children.
Consumer protection actions such as those are a large part of the office’s duties, and the attorney general has wide latitude in choosing which companies to target — or not — for alleged violations.
The office also manages the state crime lab, which analyzes drugs, DNA, ballistics and other evidence. It also handles all appeals in criminal cases.
And the office has the ability to engage in political lawsuits.
Stein went to court multiple times to fight the Trump administration on issues such as health care and a travel ban targeting majority-Muslim countries. Republican attorneys general across the country have fought the Biden administration on issues such as student loan debt forgiveness and climate change efforts.
Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton also filed a lawsuit in late 2020 attempting to help overturn the results of that year’s presidential election, which Bishop signed onto with a supportive brief.
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