A familiar face to the Charlotte area has announced their campaign for Attorney General — Congressional Rep. Jeff Jackson (D-N.C. 14) announced he would run for the seat on Thursday in a pre-recorded video clipt. Prior to his stint in Congress, Jackson was an assistant district attorney and state senator. He also serves in the National Guard and is a Afghanistan veteran.
“A group of politicians in North Carolina just redrew my congressional district to take me out,” he said in a video on Thursday. “I’m running for attorney general, and I’m going to use that job to go after political corruption.”
The announcement comes a day after North Carolina Republicans approved new congressional maps that would essentially force Jackson out of his current congressional seat. The 2023 attorney general’s race is open since Democrat incumbent Josh Stein announced his campaign for governor. According to Politico, Jackson’s entrance into the race makes him the immediate front runner of the Democratic primary as the other candidates who’ve announced campaigns aren’t as well-known as Jackson.
If the front runners of each primary are successful, Jackson will face another Charlotte local: Rep. Dan Bishop, who was the brains behind HB2 — a bill designed to prohibit trans-identifying individuals from using the bathroom that coincides with their gender identity. It was later revised to House Bill 142, which made no mention of trans individuals and bathrooms. The passage of HB2 and the remnants of HB 142 resulted in an estimated $3.75 billion loss in the North Carolina economy when several organizations, musical artists and others pulled their scheduled North Carolina-based events.
Jackson, on the other hand, filed several bills to fully repeal HB2, pushing the majority party in the General Assembly to repeal the bill. He has also continued to voice his support for LGBTQ+ North Carolinians, including voicing support for nondiscrimination ordinances.
“The LGBTQ+ community has been the target of hateful and discriminatory attacks under the Trump administration, from the transgender military ban to the rolling back of non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people looking for help from Health and Welfare programs,” Jackson wrote in a statement. “We have to enact nondiscrimination protections in law now to protect against any such attacks in the future.”