Jackson's "Dad" Vibe Proves Popular

 

“People have been fed the cotton candy [of partisan rage] for so long that they were finally ready for some broccoli, and I was there to be broccoli,” Jeff Jackson said. “If you’re talking about winning competitive elections in swing states, you better be seen as a credible messenger, and I don’t know how you can be seen that way if every time people hear from you, you’re trying to make them angry.”

--NYTimes 

If you haven't seen a Jeff Jackson video -- check TikTok and YouTube -- you haven't experienced the best plain-spoken, just-the-facts-without-political-bluster-or-partisan-bias elected official in North Carolina, possibly in all of America. No matter how technical and complicated the government's actions, "when Mr. Jackson starts talking, it sounds so simple" ("The Secret to One Swing State Democrat’s Rise? Wonky TikTok Videos").

Here's Jackson, explaining his successful lawsuit against the Trump Dept. of Ed. 

Here's Jackson a year ago, in an extended interview. He said he considered any gerrymander a corrupt act and condemned both past Democratic General Assemblies as well as the current Republican bunch. Wonder how he feels about California's threatened Democratic gerrymander to answer the Texas corruption? Bit of a dilemma for idealists. Me? I'm a realist.

Is Lara Trump House-Shopping in Wilmington?

 

Speculation is the oxygen of politics. So naturally I'm gonna breathe -- that is, read a list of potential Republican candidates for Thom Tillis's Senate seat. The NandO put Lara Trump in the first spot:

...the president’s daughter-in-law, a Fox News host, is “strongly considering jumping in the race,” NBC News reported. She is a native of Wilmington and formerly co-chaired the Republican National Committee. An unnamed source close to the Trump family told NBC News Sunday that if Lara Trump were to declare for Tillis’s seat, “The race will be over before it begins.”

My instinct is to agree with that. She would sweep the primary and could very possibly win the seat. Unless she turns out to run a bad campaign, a smug campaign, an inept campaign, or come across on the stump as all hat, no cattle. The whole Donald Jethro Trump extended family will descend on us, with lots of moolah.

Which Democrat could beat her? Roy Cooper? His silence over the last few months suggests disengagement, not the massive in-take of wind for bursting forth as a candidate for US Senate. Thomas Mills thinks he's out for 2026. Mills wants Jeff Jackson to step in.

Jeff Jackson could beat Lara Trump (though his strategists better start thinking out of the box!). I would hate like hell to lose Jackson as our Attorney General and would dread a Dan Bishop clone getting his hands on the reins of NC law (like that corrupted blond lawyer who took over the Department of Justice for Jethro). So losing Jackson carries both potential reward and consequential risk.

Some Good News (For a Change) About the Canton Paper Mill Closing

 

Thanks to Michael McElroy, reporting for Cardinal & Pine:

Pactiv Evergreen closed the Canton paper mill in 2023, a year and a half earlier than the company had agreed to under an economic development deal with the state that included millions of dollars in incentives.

The closure laid off more than 1,000 employees, causing economic ripples in Canton and Haywood County.

Then attorney-general Josh Stein sued the company in 2024 for $12 million, accusing it of breaching the terms of the deal. Under the terms of the settlement announced this week by Stein, now the governor, and current Attorney General Jeff Jackson, Pactiv will repay $5.75 million from its incentives to Canton and Haywood County.

Coverage by Cory Vaillancourt in Smoky Mountain News.

NC Republicans Don't Like It When A.G. Jeff Jackson Calls Jethro "Unlawful"

 

On January 21st, the day after Donald Jethro Trump issued an executive order supposedly changing the Constitution to deny citizenship to any person born in these United States, NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined 20 other attorneys general to file a lawsuit in DeeCee seeking to block the "flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands [of] American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage."

On Wednesday, Feb. 5, three North Carolina Senate Republicans -- Tim Moffitt, Eddie Settle, and Bobby Hanig -- filed a bill to restrict Jeff Jackson, from suing to block any flagrantly unlawful presidential executive orders and from taking legal action against any bills passed by the General Assembly.

That's how the clown-car does it: Hobble justice itself, remove the independence of our state's chief prosecutor to call a spade a goddamn spade.

Our disgust with the Republican majority in the NC General Assembly grows stronger every day. They are never hesitant in going too far. And some day, when there's a Republican Attorney General in North Carolina serving with a Democratic majority in the lege, if this piece of shit law passes, they'll regret ever putting their thumb on the administration of justice.

Jeff Jackson Joins 17 Other Attorneys General

 

ttorneys general from 18 states sued Tuesday in Federal District Court in Massachusetts to block President Donald Trump's move to end a policy known as birthright citizenship guaranteeing that U.S.-born children are citizens regardless of their parents' status. North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined in the suit.

The states view Trump’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship as “extraordinary and extreme,” said New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, who led the legal effort along with the attorneys general from California and Massachusetts. “Presidents are powerful, but he is not a king. He cannot rewrite the Constitution with a stroke of the pen.”

Jeff Jackson vs. Predatory Landlords

 

Attorney General Jeff Jackson filed on January 7th a pretty damn impressive civil suit against six mega-landlords and the software company RealPage, which illegally uses data to help the mega-landlords fix predatory rental rates. Jackson joined nine other attorneys as well as the antitrust division of the U.S. DOJ. Jackson and his fellows "allege that six corporate landlords are trading private information and manipulating vacancies to boost rents." As Ned Barnett, lead opinion writer at the NandO, put it today, "Jeff Jackson is off to an encouraging start" (Barnett). 

No kidding. Predatory renters and their unfair tactics have long invited a comeuppance, and perhaps this will be a start. The six landlords being sued collectively manage hundreds of thousands of apartment rentals (no, really), which undoubtedly makes them big, bigger targets for prosecution. What about the ugly landlords in, say, university towns who don't rent hundreds of thousands of apartments, but who rent out certainly scores of them and hundreds and maybe thousands? There seems to be a universal principle of greed that can't resist exploiting the young.

To be clear, Jackson is amending with this new suit an action first researched and taken by former A.G. Josh Stein last March, when there were seven other attorneys general joining the suit against RealPage. No mention back then of the six landlords Jackson's amended suit adds, though Stein certainly knew where they were. At a news conference last August, Stein said three of the top 10 markets that RealPage has been exploiting are in Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham/Chapel Hill, and Jackson's suit notes that none of the big landlords operating in NC are actually headquartered in NC. They're from all over, from Dallas to Chicago to Atlanta to Charleston, etc. Out-of-state corps exploiting the natives with the help of a clever software company.

Jackson’s office alleges that the singled-out landlords have allegedly used RealPage’s algorithm "to set rents for almost one-third of one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments in each of the three metro areas" (Avi Bajpai). 

Jeff Jackson's Christmas Gift

 

I'm going to miss Jeff Jackson in the U.S. House, but I'm going to celebrate Jeff Jackson as North Carolina's new attorney general. Jackson's dispatches from Washington, explaining in plain language what all the sturm und drang added up to, was an education in itself for a populace that needed educating about the habits in Mugstomp-on-the-Potomac.

His last email message came on December 23rd, as he waited for his last flight out of Reagan National Airport in DeeCee back to NC, a summing up of the furious intervention in the passage of a Continuing Resolution and what lies ahead for Speaker Mike Johnson, who has an even smaller governing majority in the House for 2025. I'm happy to excerpt some of it here:

Looking beyond the details, last week fit the same pattern we’ve seen all year:

1. The right-flank opposes a major bill.

2. This forces the Speaker to go to the minority party for votes, which involves making concessions.

3. The right-flank becomes furious over the concessions, neglecting to mention that their initial opposition to the more conservative bill is what forced the Speaker to go to the minority party in the first place.

4. The Speaker allows himself to get torched on TV by his right-flank, knowing that most of what they want from being in Congress is just to elicit anger from a national audience. He doesn’t hit back; he’s a willing punching bag.

5. The right-flank appreciates that he doesn’t hit back, and everyone moves on.

All of which means:

There’s going to be another Speaker fight when the new Congress convenes in a couple weeks, but no matter who the next Speaker is -- and my bet is it remains Mike Johnson -- the defining legislative feature of the next Congress will be the same as the last one: the right-flank’s willingness to deny their Speaker party-line wins and force him to work with the minority party to get big stuff done.

 

The Bastards in Raleigh

 

The elections which Republicans did not win in North Carolina -- governor, lieutenant gov, attorney gen'l, superintendent of public instruction -- have hardly been settled, including the one that broke the Republican veto-override super majority in the NC House, when Phil Berger & Co. realized they only had a month to pass a new law limiting what newly elected Democrats can do in office. They cleverly called the bill "Hurricane Relief," but those provisions aimed at recovering Western NC amount to less than 20 pages, while the bulk of the 130-page bill is blatant and unashamed power-grabs.

The most egregious of the power grabs applies to the governor's power to appoint the State Board of Elections, the agency which the GOP has been trying to take full control of for years. The new law, which passed the House last night and now goes to the Senate today -- fast-tracked, you betcha! -- takes the appointment power away from Governor Josh Stein and gives it to the newly elected Republican Auditor Dave Boliek, who's all too eager to carry partisan water for the bosses.

The new law also makes a project of dismantling the independence of our new Attorney General Jeff Jackson:

Republican lawmakers want to prevent the attorney general, an office that the GOP hasn’t won in an election for more than a century, from taking positions on state laws being challenged in court that are different from the position maintained by GOP legislative leaders. 

The bill also specifies that the attorney general can’t take positions in court that would lead to a state law being struck down. 

This proposal comes as outgoing Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, who voters chose to serve as the state’s next governor in this month’s election, has recused himself or refused to defend the state against a number of high-profile political lawsuits involving abortion, elections, gerrymandering and other issues. 

Stein, who has served two terms as attorney general, has defended his decisions to refuse to defend laws passed by the Republican-controlled legislature that he believes are unconstitutional. 

GOP leaders have criticized Stein in those instances, and accused him of refusing “to do his job.” They have frequently intervened in lawsuits challenging the laws they’ve passed, and defended them in court. 

Liz Barber, the director of policy and advocacy at the ACLU of North Carolina, said in an interview Tuesday morning that the changes were an “unconstitutional, undemocratic power grab.” [NewsObserver]

In what crazy universe is it all right for the Republicans to be doing this? Reducing the dimensions of a public office only after they fail to win an election to that office?

Let the lawsuits fly.

Jeff Jackson For the Win

 

...against the extremist, "bathroom bill authoring," election-denying Dan Bishop! One of the most important races on your ballot ... for Attorney General of North Carolina.

A Debate I'm Sorry I Missed

 

Jeff Jackson vs. Dan Bishop, both running to be Attorney General of NC, held at the Charlotte Convention Center on Friday, June 21, 2024 (reported on by Steve Harrison, WFAE)

 

The tenor of the debate: Bishop saying Jackson is a soft-on-crime liberal, while Jackson called Bishop an extremist who isn’t fit to be attorney general.

--Steve Harrison

 

 

Bishop warned that Jackson might use the attorney general’s office to further his own political agenda, and compared current Democratic Attorney General Stein and his predecessor, Cooper, to Letitia James, New York’s attorney general who has been after Donald Trump (successfully).

 "She vowed in her campaign to use every power at her disposal to pursue and destroy one particularly despised political enemy,” Bishop said. “That is the end of the law in this nation if that is permitted to continue.”

Jackson immediately fired back.

“Speaking of the end of law in this nation, all of that big speech was just given to you by someone who voted against certifying the last election,” Jackson said. “He was a lawyer. He knew better. He decided to pander to the people who stormed the Capitol. So let’s start there.”

Much of the debate is preserved in a Tim Boyum "Tying It Together" podcast. 

 

I can find no recent polling on this race, which is as crucial as any other race in the state, including governor, because would-be top cop Dan Bishop considers himself the whip of God, which speaks to his cruelty and his selfish view of the law. I want none of that running the attorney general's office.

What can I say about Jeff Jackson. I've watched him for years. I think he's honest, unaffected, sincere to his bones, and he's the best communicator, next to Anderson Clayton, that the North Carolina Democratic Party currently has. He's good at explaining the jungle rhythms of the U.S. Congress, and I dig his wide-eyed surprise at the weirdness of the present moment.

More Primary Results -- NC Council of State

 

Governor

Democrat Josh Stein crushed challenger Mike Morgan with almost 70% of the vote. Stein did considerably less well in Watauga, where almost 30% of voters preferred Morgan.

Republican Mark Robinson easily beat Dale Folwell and super-litigator Bill Graham, taking almost 65%. 

Rachel Hunt

Lieutenant Governor

On the Democratic side, Rachel Hunt (yes, of those Hunts) took 70% statewide (a whopping 86% in Watauga).

On the Republican side, Deanna Ballard was one of over a dozen contenders. She came in last night 3rd, just missing the opportunity to be in the runoff with top vote-getter Hal Weatherman by some 8,000 votes. So Weatherman will face instead former prosecutor Jim O'Neill in the runoff.  O'Neill came close to beating Josh Stein for A.G. in 2020.

Attorney General

Jeff Jackson took almost 55% of the vote statewide against two competitors. He took 77% in Watauga.

Commissioner of Insurance

On the Democratic ballot Natasha Marcus buried David Wheeler.

Republican incumbent Mike Causey, who's been tagged with controversy and scandal, took over 60% of the vote on the Republican ballot and will face Marcus in November. He's a ripe target for a negative campaign, which I think David Wheeler would have delivered with gusto. Marcus, not so much. Gives Causey a distinct advantage in November.

Commissioner of Labor

On the Republican ballot, Luke Farley, endorsed by yesteryear's horror story Cherie Berry, won outright with almost 37% of the vote against NC House honcho Jon Hardister. Hardister has been infamous in these precincts as a twerpy sort of snake in the General Assembly, so .... schadenfreude.

Superintendent of Public Education

On the Democratic side, Maurice (Mo) Green won with almost 66% of the vote.

On the Republican side, right-wing fright Michele Morrow beat incumbent Catherine Truitt by some 36,000 votes. Morrow has been quite an outspoken and outright enemy of public schools, calling them "indoctrination centers" and urging her followers not to send their children there. She's endorsed by Moms for Liberty. Truitt has been a target of the MAGA right for not being bullying enough to root out "diversity" and "inclusion" in all its demonic manifestations.

Treasurer

Democrat Wesley Harris easily beat his rival Gabe Esparza.

Studying for My Primary Ballot

 

I'll voluntarily tell you what is currently pissing me off a little, the innuendo that because Rep. Jeff Jackson (and candidate for Attorney General) has a big social media following, he must be a shallow and artificial politician. This was Jackson back in 2015, in the NC Senate, denouncing the Republican budget of that year and the underhanded process that birthed it. I don't consider this shallow:

The in-depth profile of Durham D.A. Satana Deberry that just came out at The Assembly doesn't do Jackson any favors, and why should it? Deberry takes the air out of the room. She's an impressive Princeton and Duke product who's been through several election cycles in Durham but surprised everyone when she challenged Jeff Jackson for the Atty Gen'l job, because she's so well known in Durham County and virtually nowhere else. 

(I couldn't help wincing all through Lena Geller and Michael Hewlett's profile, how Dan Bishop would absolutely love Satana Deberry on the ballot opposite him. He could so make hay off her record as D.A. -- "Soft on crime!" And her queerness.)

Jeff Jackson's a Boy Scout, and I see him standing on the principles of the Scouting Code, and all the better that he can actually communicate with clarity. He will give Dan Bishop fits.

The Chronicles of Jeff Jackson

 

Roll Call file photo

I like an email from my Congressman (except, he's not my Congressman at all) that begins like this: "I’m at the airport, waiting to board, trying to escape the snowstorm they say is about to hit D.C. I’ve got drill this weekend with the National Guard, so I can’t afford to get stuck here."

For pacing, for narrative tension, for sharp characterizations and all the other narrative skills of a good story-teller, Congressman Jeff Jackson of the 14th CD could moonlight profitably as a chronicler of his times, a historian in the eye of a historical storm, who just incidentally has the talent to 'splain the inexplicable.

The email I got last Friday detailed the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of new Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson as he sweated to pass the third budget extension of this current Congress -- with half his caucus, not just the Freedom Caucus, but some hundred+ Republicans opposing the budget extension Johnson had negotiated with Democrats. Johnson was close to losing a majority of his own caucus, when Jackson says this happened:

(Notably, one member of the majority did the Speaker a favor by switching his vote from no to yes at the last possible moment just so the Speaker could claim that a majority of his party voted for it. I watched the guy get the signal from a member of leadership to change his vote. Then after he switched he got a pat on the back and a fist bump.)

Jackson wrote that the 100+ Republicans who abandoned Mike Johnson knew that every Democrat was voting for the extension and that it would therefore pass without their participation. "They had the luxury of taking the messaging high-ground," wrote Jackson, "voting against it, and casting stones. An age-old political tactic."

Jackson unpacks the education of the Speaker, from Freedom Caucus soldier denouncing the last Speaker for being too weak, to the guy who is the Speaker now and negotiated with Democrats. I consider this piece of Jackson's writing pretty solid political science as well as good story-telling:

The Speaker, as you’d expect, voted in favor of the extension. Because of course he did. He’s the one who brought it to a vote. He understands why it’s necessary, what a shutdown would mean, and the political reality of divided government.

But let’s wind the clock back to our first budget extension vote. The one from last fall. The one that got the old Speaker fired.

We heard a very different tune from our current Speaker on that vote. Not only did he vote against it, but he gave a big speech on the House floor surrounded by other members of the right-flank in which he said… all the same stuff they’re now saying about him.

So either he has suddenly become a completely different person -- he’s not a “fighter,” not willing to make “hard choices,” not “standing on principle,” and all the other stuff he’s being accused of -- or he simply no longer has the luxury of fantasy.

He has actual power, which comes with actual responsibility, and he’s chosen to respect that enough to break with his old buddies and not shut down the government.

"With actual power comes actual responsibility."

 Gonna miss this writer in the Halls of Congress!

Jeff Jackson Gets Competition for A.G.

 

The news flashed yesterday morning while I was on the road to Virginia: WFAE reporter Steve Harrison got the scoop that Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry will be challenging Jeff Jackson in the Democratic primary for Attorney General. That's surprising enough. Also surprising were the swipes that Deberry took at Jackson in her exclusive interview with Harrison. She sounded oddly petty and jealous. Among other things she told Harrison:

“We don’t want people to think that there is not a choice in this race, that there is not somebody who is qualified, who is experienced, who is a prosecutor who has run a large office and who has the courage to do the job,” she said. “And I don’t think there is a candidate now who has any of that.”

None of that? Not even "courage to do the job"? (And for the record: Jeff Jackson is also an experienced ex-prosecutor. He worked as an assistant D.A. in Gaston County and he currently serves in the Judge Advocate General's Corps with the Army National Guard.)

“I don’t concede he has more name recognition,” she said. “I can raise money. And I think there are people out there who want to see a ticket with an attorney general who knows what they are doing. Someone who is a serious lawyer. I’m a serious lawyer and a serious person — not a national social media following.”

Ah! There it is: "national social media following." That's the negative (and petty jealous) rap on Jackson, that he uses social media to communicate, that he's too visible, too plainly spoken, wows too many followers. Oddly enough, that's the attack line also favored by the Republican candidate for A.G., Dan Bishop, and that's a club a Democrat might not want to belong to.

Soon after reporter Harrison tweeted out his scoop, Sen. Graig Meyer, a fellow Democrat who served with Jackson in the NC Senate, endorsed Deberry:

Satana Deberry is instantly the most qualified person in this race. Attorney General is position that should not be a consolation prize, nor should any race be a coronation. North Carolina needs candidates of substance with clear values and a bold vision. She has my full support.

Other comments on Harrison's post were not so complimentary of Deberry:

I wonder if she was planning to run for quite some time and is angry that he has jumped in? Seems kind of harsh

12:36 PM · Nov 10, 2023

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God forbid our candidates have a social media following and get young potential voters engaged

1:46 PM · Nov 10, 2023

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Well, I was all in for

@JeffJacksonNC

before, but if I'd HAD any doubts this would have tipped me over 100%. I'm going to go donate to his campaign right now.

4:32 PM · Nov 10, 2023

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So she’s not a good communicator? Good to know

7:25 PM · Nov 10, 2023

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