- [Announcer] Up next, one-on-one interviews with Democrat Jeff Jackson and Republican Dan Bishop.

Both hope to be North Carolina's next attorney general, on this special State Lines.

[upbeat music] ♪ [upbeat music continues] ♪ Hello, I'm Kelly McCullen.

This State Lines special focuses on the 2024 race for North Carolina attorney general.

It's a position that has been referenced in state and colonial politics for that matter since 1677.

The attorney general serves four-year terms, has no term limits, and is considered the top legal officer in North Carolina.

Joining us on the State Lines set, Representative Jeff Jackson, Democratic nominee for attorney general in North Carolina.

Mr. Jackson, good to have you on.

- Good to be here.

1677, it's amazing.

- Only about 400, well, not quite 400 years yet.

Where were you in 1677?

- Yeah, a twinkle in the eye.

- Of somewhat way back.

Well, Jeff, tell us about yourself.

We were talking off-camera about name recognition on what's called down-ballot council estate races.

No matter how well-known and how hard you work to get your name out there, most folks still don't know who runs for office.

Who's Jeff Jackson?

- A husband and a father of three, 16, 9, and five, from Charlotte.

Currently represent them in Congress, District 14.

This is gonna be my one and only term as a member of Congress.

Before that, served in the State Senate for four terms.

Before that was a criminal prosecutor in Gaston County outside Charlotte.

And before that, served in Afghanistan with the Army.

Am currently a major in the National Guard.

This is year 22 for me in the military.

- How long have you had your eye on the state attorney general's race?

There was always the rumor Josh Stein was going to attempt to graduate out of that chair into the governor's office.

He's there, open seat, but how long were you percolating on the idea?

- I was thinking about it while I was a member of Congress because the State Supreme Court election had flipped.

I was pretty sure that they were gonna gerrymander the congressional district and that I was gonna be out of a job in Congress, had always been interested in that potential.

And then push came to shove.

They did the redistricting.

We were completely gerrymandered and it became clear that this was going to be the most important public service opportunity of my lifetime.

So jumped in the race the day after or two days after the redistricting, which happened last October.

- Let's break it down.

What did you learn from serving those years in the North Carolina Senate that prepares you for today?

And I'll ask you about that and about your House service.

One term but a lot happened.

- Yeah, a lot happened.

A very eventful term.

When I was in the State Senate, when I first got there, I didn't know hardly anybody there.

So I made a decision to speak with every member of the majority party, one-on-one in their office.

Took me six months.

Session ended before I could finish.

I had to drive out to Phil Berger's law office and meet with him.

He was kind enough to take the meeting.

And every bill that I got passed in the four terms that I served there, I could trace back to one of those early one-on-one conversations.

That's where you learn people's zones of reasonability.

Same in Congress.

Those personal relationships at the committee level and the subcommittee level, they make a huge difference.

For the front-page issues, personal relationships, there's not a lot of traction there.

But most of the issues that we deal with, as you know, they're not front-page issues.

And personal relationships, being able to trust the person you're working with, makes a huge difference.

- I've seen you in candidate forums recently.

And some of the issues are more seemingly about Congress, congressional issues, immigration, abortion, this, that, federal arguments.

But as attorney general and if I'm a voter looking at you, looking at the entire field of candidates but speaking for you, what issues should they be paying attention to in your estimation when they cast that vote for attorney general?

- One big thing the next attorney general is gonna be taking on is this ongoing fentanyl epidemic.

We're losing an average of nine people a day.

I think of this in terms of the supply side and the demand side.

On the supply side, the AG has an obligation to do a better job of identifying and breaking apart the distribution cells that exist within our state.

General Assembly just passed an anti-money laundering law.

We had been a state that didn't have one.

It goes into effect in December.

It would be a very important tool for the next attorney general to use to break apart those distribution cells.

On the demand side, it's about the most effective form for treatment.

The folks who are addicted to fentanyl, they're not using it to get high.

They haven't gotten high in years.

They're using it to stave off withdrawal, which is why the most effective form of addiction treatment for fentanyl is medicated-assisted, gets you through the withdrawal period.

My job as attorney general would be to advocate for the most effective form of addiction treatment.

- But attorney generals are tough on crime.

And sometimes having a treatment-first approach is viewed as soft on crime and I think that's come up in the debate.

How do you balance that out?

How could you convince a Republican legislature to say, "Hey, we get it.

"People do need to go to jail and serve time "but we need to get 'em treated."

- Yeah, 100%, that's why you start with the supply side conversation.

You talk about how we're gonna do a better job of identifying and breaking apart the distribution cells that exist within our estate, the connections to organized crime.

We have a new tool there with an anti-money laundering law.

There's definitely a tough on crime conversation that needs to be had about this.

- Do you think fentanyl, is it out of control and the state must wrangle it in and then start attacking it or is it well-organized but just huge and therefore it's a mountain that can be climbed but you must start somewhere with law enforcement and with prosecution?

How do you see it?

- I think it's the latter.

I think it's a mountain that must be climbed.

And as far as working with prosecution and law enforcement, a lot of this is about coordination between local, state, and federal.

US attorneys in our state are doing a fantastic job in using their resources to go after these guys.

- If elected, how much of what Attorney General Stein may leave behind in culture, in politics and positions, would you carry over into the early days of your administration as you get on your feet, if elected?

- Well, one thing that I agree with was his approach to how to represent the state.

I think he saw the job of attorney general, you are, in addition to being the top prosecutor, you're the state's lawyer.

So when the state gets sued, it's your obligation to represent the state, which means you have to do that even when you personally agree or disagree with what the state may have done, what the General Assembly may have done.

Josh Stein was willing to represent the state in lots of matters with which he personally disagreed because that's the job.

There is an outer limit to that.

And the outer limit is the state and the federal constitution.

So it would be wrong of me to defend the state if I genuinely felt there was a clear constitutional problem.

But that is the exception to the rule.

- How do you go about explaining that to ordinary voters or citizens who are both Republican and Democrat because Mr. Stein did draw a line, very public, but we didn't get to the meat of the matter.

He would just say, "I think it's unconstitutional, that's why I'm not doing it," which of course led to a lot of barbs being thrown in Raleigh and in the statewide media.

So how much do you owe it to tell people when you think something is unconstitutional and do you call out legislators for that?

- I think you do owe it to give them a full explanation because it deserves to be the exception to the rule.

You need to explain to them, "Here's the rule.

"Here are all the times where I have represented the state where I kinda personally had an issue with it.

But I'm not doing it this time and here's exactly why."

If I were a voter, I would want to hear a detailed explanation of why.

I think Josh has done that on the very few times he has made that decision.

And that's what voters could expect from me.

- Are there some issues that you think the legislature has already crossed that line in the general sense with certain issues that you say coming in, "Republicans, you're not gonna have me as a representative on this particular issue."

- It's very rare.

It's not for me to prejudge what they may or may not do there.

I'm gonna take a fresh look at all of those instances.

- How do you think your relationship will be?

And I've asked this of anyone running for an office, from labor commissioner up to the attorney general.

How do you think you'll get along with the General Assembly?

New crop of Democrats there.

Some have replaced you.

And now you've got Republicans there who could have a supermajority if you arrive?

- I think I'm gonna get along well.

The idea is the attorney general is supposed to be basically nonpartisan.

When I'm interacting with the General Assembly, it's probably going to be along the lines of, "Hey, I need this tool to help keep people safe."

I've served my entire time in the State Senate on the Judiciary Committee.

That would be the main committee I think that the AG would intersect with in making those legislative proposals.

I want this job because it's really not about left versus right.

It's just about doing what's right.

If that's the energy that you bring to the state legislature, I think they'll reciprocate.

- In a race that's based on law and order, how safe is North Carolina right now in your interpretation?

The fentanyl crisis is out there.

That's certainly a safety issue.

Anything else?

How should people feel about law and order in the state?

- Fentanyl crisis is out there.

It's very real.

Nine people a day.

Major problem.

Juvenile crime has also gone up.

In particular, larcenies, grand theft auto has gone up.

And if you talk to law enforcement about how to deal with that, they're asking for more outreach program to keep juveniles off the streets, to give them safe places to go after school.

I think a good role for the attorney general is in advocating for those kinds of programs.

- What sort of social programs or agenda would you like to implement as you come in because keeping youth off the streets and healthy activities.

Anything else out there that you can stump on and say, "If you like me, this is what I'll try to get through our General Assembly."

- Well, people associate with law enforcement with lots of local law enforcement.

A couple state law enforcement people know off the top of their head, like state highway patrol.

There are over a dozen different forms of state law enforcement.

And they're not all funded in a standardized way.

Some of them are really underfunded.

The DMV Theft Bureau, which we rely on to help combat grand theft auto, is really underfunded.

I want to be a champion for law enforcement, making sure that they are properly paid, especially law enforcement at the state level.

Look, if you want good response time, if you wanna give community policing a real chance, you have to have properly-funded law enforcement.

- I was gonna ask you about that.

That's a Republican-Democratic issue is how heavy to apply law and order through local police and local sheriffs versus community policing.

Sounds a little softer.

Sounds like it's more of a person-to-person approach.

How do you balance that?

How do you thread that with voters?

Some say we need to really crack down on our streets.

Other people say, "No, they're doing it too heavy-handed as it is."

- Well, the primary directive here is to keep people safe.

So I'm interested in supporting protocols that allow us to do that.

If you talk to law enforcement, particularly in some of our urban areas, the reason they use community policing is because they've found establishing those relationships is really important for keeping people safe because they get calls about who to be on the lookout for, who just committed a crime.

Being able to be trusted in all these diverse communities, really important for keeping people safe.

- How important is it for you to pay attention to what's going on at the local level?

The rape kit issue just almost is it swallowed up a whole bunch of headlines, lots of money.

They've cleared that backlog.

So justice is on its way for a lot of people who've been assaulted.

So do you stay on top of that?

Anything else out there you're seeing that as attorney general you need to tackle?

- It's interesting because there are regional disparities to the types of crime that we're seeing, the public threats.

In certain parts of the western part of our state, it's not fentanyl as much as it's methamphetamine.

And when you're out there talking to law enforcement, they're telling you about how meth is being manufactured in two-liter Coke bottles.

So you do have to have a regional approach.

- How much outreach have you done to local sheriffs and local police as a candidate?

- I spoke to the Sheriff's Association 10 days ago, had a lot of good conversations with them.

- Let's talk about your public-facing persona.

Attorney general can be a quiet office.

It can be a loud office.

As a rep, you do your TikToks.

You talk to the viewers or to the yeah, you mean viewers, directly.

You did it on the floor of the State Senate, if I remember correctly.

And my first video of you was seeing the snowstorm.

And you guys were trapped there.

How forward-facing do you need to be?

When do you turn inward and just do the job of the state attorney general?

- I don't have all the answers to that question yet.

I know that I wanna be able to use social media for transparency but also for public safety.

For instance, talking to young people about because of how fentanyl is now laced into everything, there's no such thing as safe experimentation with drugs.

Being able to be a sitting attorney general with a major social media reach and connect with young people directly about those messages I think would be a really good use for social media.

Am I under any illusion that the day-to-day work of the AG is as interesting to people as what they see coming out of Congress?

No, of course not.

And I wouldn't try to force that.

But I think I can use the job in or rather that tool in a way that helps the job.

- Do you see agencies and other commissioners and such copying you in some way as a direct outreach?

Has it been satisfying for you professionally or personally?

- It has been very satisfying to see that there's still an appetite for being spoken to in a normal tone of voice, that people are interested in conversations like this without all the pounding on the table.

I'm a little surprised actually.

- All right, this is Jeff Jackson, Democratic nominee for North Carolina attorney general.

Mr. Jackson, thanks for making the trip here to the State Lines studio.

- Good to see you.

- While absentee ballots will start being mailed out in early September, in-person early voting begins October 17th, 2024.

It will end on November 2nd.

Election day, our traditional election day, is November 5th.

That's also the deadline for absentee ballots to be received by local elections officers.

And if you cast a ballot, you will be asked to present a photo identification.

[upbeat music] Joining me now, Congressman Dan Bishop, the Republican running for North Carolina's attorney general on the 2024 ballot.

Representative, good to have you on the State Lines set.

Your first visit.

Welcome aboard.

- Terrific to be with you, Kelly.

I'm glad to have the chance.

- Well, I start with the softball questions.

Who is Dan Bishop and why's the timing right for you to run for North Carolina attorney general?

- The last five years, Kelly, and you can start probably anywhere but I've served in Congress for the 8th District of North Carolina.

And I have an easy path back there if I wanted to stay.

But I decided to leave Congress to run for attorney general because I think law and order needs to be restored everywhere in the country but certainly in North Carolina.

And I'm the candidate who has the long experience in complicated legal matters, as a 29-year career practicing law, to make sure that happens.

- What was it about Congress?

Because I saw you on the national stage.

You would do big hits with the big news outlets.

And it looked like fun.

I've seen you have friends on the air and enemies on the air.

But what was it about DC that said, "Eh, five years enough, we're gonna come back?"

- Well, I don't think people ought to go up there and stay for 25 years anyway.

And I would say, look, I don't believe the answers are in Washington for now.

I see an institution that's sort of stagnant in some ways.

And we have huge problems that Congress needs to address.

But for a variety of reasons, that's not happening yet.

Needs to happen and in the meantime, I will say I've looked around and the state attorneys general as a phenomenon across the country.

It's an enormously potent position within North Carolina state government.

The tentacles go everywhere.

Every lawyer across every board, commission, agency, all answer to the attorney general.

And so there's a lot of involvement across a variety of things in North Carolina government.

But state AGs nationally have been responsible for taking on some of our biggest challenges and setting things right.

And so I'd like to participate in that.

And I'll be a robust participant.

- On a bipartisan basis, there are attorneys, attorneys general, wanna get the grammar right, that are quiet.

They put their head down.

They look inward.

They serve their state, representing them in court cases large and small.

You've got some like New York, Kansas now with the education, some of that, that are out there in the public sphere and they make brand names out of themselves.

What are you when it comes to that kind of leader and how do you balance that if you're elected?

- Look, the most important thing is to revere and enforce the law on a non-partisan basis.

We have the instruments of law that law as an institution is extraordinarily important to our society, both criminal justice law, keeping people safe, but also all aspects of law, civil law and so forth.

And what we're seeing emerge, you mentioned New York, Leticia James, the Attorney General of New York, ran for that office, did something no candidate for a prosecutorial office in America has ever done before.

And that was to target somebody, name the person, and say she was gonna turn every power at her disposal to the task of destroying a political enemy.

I can't tell you how dangerous that is.

The attorney general's job is to enforce the law, all of the law, not pick and choose what you want to enforce, not an ideologized version of the law where you take your politics and you ram it through the mechanisms of the law that you can manipulate from the perspective of a lawyer.

That's a lot of what has happened and it needs to stop.

But the far most important aspect of that, Kelly, is that North Carolinians' families are afraid of crime.

Crime is at persistent 10-year highs.

A lot of folks out in media and some politicians saying, "Oh, we've turned the corner.

It ticked back down this quarter."

Not in North Carolina, by the way.

But it hasn't ticked down anywhere significantly.

We're still at those persistent 10-year highs that triggered, started off the day the worst idea in the history of American politics was articulated.

And that was defund police.

- As attorney general, there's bully pulpit and then there's what you're able to actually do.

Let's talk about that balance because you're not gonna go on the streets yourself and enforce crime, make police officers more effective, make sheriffs more empowered.

How do you do it as attorney general to set that tone?

- You're absolutely right.

And you sort of asked in the first question, "Do you wanna go out and be Mr. Hollywood?

Do you wanna make a big show?"

And I don't.

That's why I answered.

'Cause the important thing is what I said about what you do.

You enforce law.

I think you do.

It is a public position and one in which there is a bully pulpit.

And there's a great deal of informal power and responsibility to collaborate tightly with the criminal justice infrastructure across the state, sheriffs, district attorneys.

Most of the sheriffs in North Carolina endorse my candidacy.

Most of the district attorneys across North Carolina endorse my candidacy.

They are starved for an attorney general that wants to collaborate with them, to find out how they can be more effective, run the state crime lab more effectively, interact with the General Assembly to change policies where that would be helpful.

So that has been absent on a level that I didn't even realize.

And I hear it all the time.

- How is that ecosystem with I will call it a ecosystem of local law enforcement, the city level, county level, as it comes back to Raleigh, not only a deal with now-attorney general Stein but also a Republican legislature that's easily Republican, supermajority in fact.

- I'm sorry, what's your?

- I was gonna say, what's the ecosystem like?

- Oh, what's the ecosystem?

Yeah, that's okay.

Well, that's right.

You have a constitutional officer in every state who's the district attorney.

By the way, my opponent says he's gonna be the top prosecutor.

The attorney general doesn't prosecute.

The DAs have all the prosecutorial power.

If they ask the attorney general special prosecutions unit to come in or give permission, the attorney general can handle a prosecution.

But it only happens under this attorney general once or twice a year for the last two or three years.

District attorneys, so you got district attorneys prosecuting.

You got a constitutional officer and the sheriff.

The sheriff, in particularly in rural counties, very, very important figure.

And every county's important.

Mecklenburg County handles the jailing and so forth, runs the jail.

And then you have municipal police departments under the control of city councils and their city managers in all the municipalities across the state just about, certainly the larger ones.

And then there's a whole 'nother dynamic, federal agencies, so the FBI and federal prosecutors.

And there is it's interesting, Kelly.

There's tight coordination and collaboration between state and federal and yet none of these law enforcement agencies across North Carolina are receiving an intensive collaboration from the attorney general's office.

They've told me over and over and over, everywhere I've gone in the state, is 100% absent.

It's the craziest thing I've ever heard.

- How do you do that, get down to that local grassroots level?

It seems like there is you have even said tight collaboration, state and federal.

Take it locally, some counties are huge.

Some are very sparsely populated.

How do you serve all?

- It takes intensive work.

You got to be prepared to do the work.

And it takes listening.

You got to go.

So we just finished one here in Raleigh today.

We've had now four crime and safety public listening sessions across the state with crime victims who've suffered some of these horrific crimes and are still waiting for justice with district attorneys, sheriffs, other law enforcement agencies.

Just received the endorsement of the PBA today, North Carolina's section of the PBA, a police organization that stands for the rights and interests of line law enforcement officers.

They know I'm going to back up the criminal justice system.

They do say the attorney general is the top law enforcement officer of the state.

And that's clear.

That's a responsibility.

But what we've often seen, frankly in the incumbent and in my opponent, is they wanna sort of be part of kind of eroding the criminal justice system, putting cops on the defensive.

And they don't do what they need to stand up for tough law and order.

And consequently, that's why you have crime rising.

Last six months in Charlotte, the June 30 report, murders up another 36% in Charlotte.

Homicides by juveniles up 300%.

Raleigh's figures, homicides up 75%.

Rapes up I think the number was 17%.

So we're still seeing and people are afraid of that, Kelly.

You look at any polling and you go talk to people very much, you'll hear they're concerned about their safety of their family.

- I want you to look down the street on Jones Street where that legislature is.

What could Republican leaders expect from you?

Because we have attorney generals, these situations where laws were passed and they're sued immediately and the attorney general will step in, defend some in court.

There has been times and Josh Stein readily admits, "If I find it unconstitutional in my conscious, I may not step forward."

How do you lead in that?

Republicans are gonna expect you to be on the team but what are they getting and to that issue?

- Here's one of these little legal tricks that I'm talking about, Kelly.

What you see, it is true that if the General Assembly were to pass a law that for which there's no good faith argument that it is constitutional, then it would fall to the attorney general not to support that law.

That's a very rare circumstance.

What we've seen in the attorney general's office by Josh Stein, what Jeff Jackson is anxious to do and he's given answers time and time again publicly about what he wants to do, he wants to go and set up the attorney general's office as a policy counterweight to the legislature.

Legislature passes a law.

He doesn't like it.

Voter ID, accepted in well more than 35 states in the United States, tested in litigation over and over and over again, a mild version of it in North Carolina.

Since it was passed into law in 2013 and then passed by the citizens as a constitutional amendment in 2018, for a decade.

Both of the last two attorneys general have fought its implementation and it's never been implemented until the primary of this year.

That is lawfare.

That is the perspective of taking.

They don't like the policy of it, even though 80% of North Carolinians seem to.

And so they're gonna use legal trickery, collusive settlements with litigants on the other political side, to stop it, to hold it up.

That's got to stop.

And it is something we're seeing in case after case here in North Carolina by the incumbent and by my opponent and across the country.

- Would you see it within your purview as attorney general, if you see a big piece of legislation coming through, is it your job to interject to say, "Ladies and gentlemen, you may be passing a law that does not withstand constitutional muster?"

Or is it your job to wait till it passes and then we decide if someone wants to challenge it?

- Oh, I think the attorney general should be part of the conversation with the legislature, needs to have the proper understanding of his constitutional role though.

The attorney general is the state's lawyer.

The governor has a different role in policymaking.

He has a veto.

He has a part of the legislative process because he can exercise that veto.

Attorney general doesn't actually have that.

What the attorney general should bring to the table is the collaboration with the entire criminal justice system across the state so then go to the General Assembly and say, "We need these more resources.

We need this policy change."

The juveniles, as I mentioned earlier, that chief of police in Charlotte is no rabid right-winger but he says the juveniles are out of control.

Well, I was part of Raise the Age when that came through like a hot knife through butter in the legislature.

And the legislature has now acted to respond to that, to change that somewhat in order to get a grip on the juveniles that are just need justice.

- Last 15 seconds.

You feel voters out there are looking down-ballot or is Harris-Trump taking the air out of the campaign, very quickly?

- This most robust campaign for attorney general in the state's history.

People are interested in crime and law and order.

They're gonna wanna pay attention to this race.

- All right, Dan Bishop, Republican nominee for attorney general, thank you very much, sir, for being in on State Lines.

- I appreciate it, Kelly.

- Hey and thank you for watching, folks.

Always, you're most important.

For more voting information, visit pbsnc.org.

Put a slash and vote.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thank you so much for watching.

[upbeat music] ♪ [upbeat music continues] ♪ - [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.