It started as a campaign to be forthright, honest, and transparent about the government. It eventually turned into a viral sensation. Rep. Jeff Jackson isn’t your typical TikTok user, and his topics aren’t usually ones that trend on social media. Yet, he has developed a following.
“Keep this type of content coming,” one user responded to Jackson's video. “This is SUCH a good way to get people interested in representation,” gushed another.
For the ambitious and savvy 40-year old Democrat, one company town’s trash is turning out to be his treasure.
Since that first viral post, Jackson has attracted nearly 500,000 followers on TikTok, and his plainspoken, no-frills videos careen through the app’s algorithm before plopping into the feeds of somewhere between 1 and 3 million people on any given day.
But on Capitol Hill, Jackson is a rare breed: he’s just one of roughly 30 members with TikTok accounts, and part of an increasingly small cohort of politicians more broadly who use one.
With his blunt yet calm style, he has been labeled the “anti-MTG” in Congress for becoming a media sensation without the bluster. This video includes his most famous statement — “it’s really clear from working there just a few months that most of the really angry voices in Congress are totally faking it...”
Today, I profile a wonderful representative in Rep. Jeff Jackson!
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Rep. Jeff Jackson (North Carolina-14)
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Biography — A Wonderful Backstory
Rep. Jeff Jackson has a compelling biography for a politician. It started with his military experience, which was triggered by the 9/11 attacks. He was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan as a part of Operation Enduring Freedom. He talks about how that experience and his continuing military service (he is still a JAG in the North Carolina National Guard) shaped his philosophy in Congress.
After his deployment and graduating from the University of North Carolina’s law school, he was a prosecutor in Gaston County, North Carolina. His campaign website summed up his time as follows:
In Gaston County, he tried more than one hundred cases. In the process, he saw firsthand how a failure to properly invest in and prioritize public education, economic development, mental health care, and criminal justice reform was harming people and families across North Carolina.
Rep. Jeff Jackson has served in the military and eventually became a JAG.
His next step on a long journey to becoming a member of Congress was a long stint in the North Carolina state senate. An interesting thing happened at the meeting to nominate him, which shows the kind of man Rep. Jeff Jackson is.
First, the city’s mayor, Patrick Cannon, was arrested on corruption charges in a major FBI sting. A big-mustached state senator named Dan Clodfelter filled Cannon’s mayoral post. Jackson was one of four people who raised their hand to fill Clodfelter’s seat in Raleigh.
Democrats met at Little Rock AME Zion to pick one of the four. Per state law, each needed a second nomination. Jackson had multiple. But one of his opponents, Darryl Bonapart, did not. After a few awkward seconds of silence, Jackson raised his hand to second his opponent.
The Democrats chose Jackson that night.
In 2015, when he was a state senator in North Carolina, he was the only legislator to show up for a session due to a snowstorm. It put him on the map and showed the world what a wonder he could be.
Democratic lawmakers in North Carolina have been in the minority for the past four years — so when one Democrat from Charlotte had the legislature to himself during Tuesday's snow, he got right to work.
Sen. Jeff Jackson, D-Mecklenburg, documented his day at the General Assembly on his Facebook page starting at 8 a.m. Tuesday morning, using the hashtag #JustOneLegislator.
Maybe it's evidence that a small government is an efficient government, as some commenters on Jackson's posts have suggested. But it's clear that the senator, who has been in office since May 2014, knows how to turn a lonely N.C. General Assembly snow day into social media gold — by passing all the bills he wants.
In addition to the snow day viral moment while in the state senate, Rep. Jeff Jackson tirelessly worked to change NC’s antiquated consent law. There was finally unanimous consent for the bill to change the law in 2019!
For the past four decades, a loophole in North Carolina sexual assault law made it impossible for a woman to revoke consent after a sex act had begun.
Another loophole, a result of a 2008 court ruling, made it legal to have sex with someone who is incapacitated if that person’s condition was caused by his or her actions — like consuming drugs or alcohol.
Lawmakers in the State Senate and House of Representatives, which are both controlled by Republicans, unanimously approved a wide-ranging sexual assault bill on Thursday that would close those loopholes. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is expected to sign it into law.
“It’s a big win for basic decency,” said Jeff Jackson, a Democratic state senator who represents Mecklenburg County. “We’re no longer the only state in the country where a woman doesn’t have a legal right to revoke her consent.”
Jeff Jackson campaigning in Charlotte for his doomed statewide Senate run in 2022.
Running for NC-14 wasn’t his first choice. In fact, he campaigned to become the next Democratic U.S. senator from North Carolina. He ultimately dropped out of that race and deferred to the eventual nominee, former State Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley.
By the time Jeff Jackson got here, he already had been to 95 of the 100 counties in the state, drawing crowds in not only Democratic strongholds but reliably Republican outposts as well. Now on a steamy Saturday morning an hour northwest of Charlotte, pressing into the more rural reaches of Lincoln County where last year more than 7 in 10 voters voted for Donald Trump, this Democrat running for the United States Senate bounded across a park toward a pavilion that was packed with 130 whooping, clapping supporters. “Y’all — I can’t tell you how surprised I am by how many people are here!”
Dressed in his uniform — brown shoes, khaki pants, soft blue Oxford shirt — Jackson launched into his characteristically spirited, borderline iconoclastic spiel. He told the throng what hordes of consultants had told him about how to win — polls, focus groups, “five key phrases in five key counties!” “I said, ‘Bullshit!’” he said, leaning forward to land the punchline. “That’s how you lose!”
Luckily for us, he ran for and won NC-14 instead! This district covered parts of Charlotte and its suburbs. He won by over a 15 point margin in 2022.
Jackson Working in Congress
Far away from the glare of the TV cameras, the lure of social media, and of course the partisan gridlock, Rep. Jeff Jackson gets to work for his constituents. He sits on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Space, Science, and Technology Committee. That means he has a unique perch to explain how the process of drafting the defense appropriations bill happens.
He has introduced plenty of bipartisan legislation during this legislative session. The most significant one was included in the defense appropriations bill, which once stripped of the partisan culture war deal breakers, stands a good chance of passing. It extends parental leave to new fathers and parents adopting children.
Today, Rep. Jeff Jackson (D-NC), with Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) cosponsoring, secured the inclusion of an amendment to expand parental leave for Reserve and National Guard members in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 as passed out of the House Armed Services Committee.
This provision would expand parental leave eligibility for Reserve and National Guard members to include fathers and adoptive parents. Current parental leave policies are limited to new mothers. The amendment mirrors Rep. Jackson’s bipartisan Reserve Component Parental Leave Parity Act, which he introduced earlier this year with Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA).
“This is a huge step towards getting parental leave for all military parents,” said Congressman Jeff Jackson. “I’m looking forward to the NDAA being passed by the full House and Senate, and signed into law.”
Other bills he has introduced include the following:
Expanding America’s National Cemetery Act: The Expanding America’s National Cemetery Act would ensure veterans continue to be provided with full military honors, establish a report on increasing cemetery capacity and review interment criteria at Arlington National Cemetery.
CLOUD AI Act: The CLOUD AI Act will ensure that China cannot remotely access the American semiconductors and chips that they cannot purchase directly under Department of Commerce export controls.
Post-Quantum Cybersecurity Standards Act: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been developing standards for post-quantum encryption algorithms since 2016. The last time NIST updated major encryption algorithms, it took over seven years to migrate the economy to the new encryption standards.
The Post-Quantum Cybersecurity Standards Act will accelerate the adoption and deployment of these algorithms once they have been finalized.
Not only can he introduce bipartisan bills, he also has a pulse on local issues affecting his district. Apparently, Charlotte, NC is in the biggest weather radar gap in the nation. Jackson is looking to correct that.
Jackson truly came to D.C. to get to work right away!
The Next Chapter — Running for NC Attorney General
When North Carolina redrew the Congressional map in October, it led to this candid admission by Rep. Jeff Jackson — that he is a one-term member of Congress.
Luckily for him, North Carolina elects most of its statewide offices during presidential years, including in 2024. The governor race has a clear frontrunner in Attorney General Josh Stein. The Attorney General position is wide open, and Jackson has the exact skillset needed to be successful at that task. Here’s his campaign announcement.
Jackson has stiff competition for the post coming from a fellow member of Congress. Rep. Dan Bishop is a far right legislator, and his claim to fame is the NC “bathroom bill” that specifically targeted people who are transgender. No doubt that he will be a terrible Attorney General for North Carolina, which is why it is important to support Rep. Jeff Jackson in seeking the post.
Jackson is still fine tuning his messaging critical issues for the new office he is seeking. It is likely that issues relating to safeguarding our democracy, the rights of women and people who are LGBTQ+, and of course criminal justice reform will be critical issues in his campaign. Here is an excerpt about how he feels about criminal justice reform:
Our criminal justice system is not upholding its mandate to distribute justice and protect the public fairly and equally. There are deep racial disparities that impact Black and Hispanic communities. We incarcerate people for nonviolent drug offenses while relying on jails to be one of the biggest mental health providers in the country. We need comprehensive criminal justice reform and real investment in re-entry and treatment programs.
In the state Senate, Jeff proposed and supported criminal justice reforms including decreasing unnecessary arrests and engagements with the police, reducing the use of mandatory minimums, and helping the tens of thousands of North Carolinians who lost their driver’s licenses due to an unpaid traffic ticket. He has also supported legislation that would modernize our expungement system, making it easier for people to have their records expunged if they were found not guilty or their charges were dismissed.
And in 2016, Jeff was one of only two NC Senators to vote against a bill that would have made it harder for North Carolinians to access dash camera and body camera footage.
A nickname for Attorney General is “aspiring governor”. If he is successful in winning the 2024 election, that catapults him to the top of the contender list for future statewide offices other than Attorney General. Let’s put in the legwork to make his campaign a stellar one in North Carolina!
Instead of listening to me recap this article, I think it is better to let Jeff Jackson recap it for me. In mid-October, he did an interview for Meidas Touch. I’m not usually a fan of 17-minute interviews, but I found myself glued to the screen while he was talking.
Even though we lose Rep. Jeff Jackson in the House, *knocks on wood* North Carolina will gain a very effective Attorney General!
New Faces in Congress is a diary series meant to highlight our new and diverse members of Congress in the Democratic Party. These 36 House freshmen range from political neophytes to seasoned legislative veterans. The series will run every Sunday morning, bright and early.
Last week, the New Faces in Congress series continued with a profile on Rep. Wiley Nickel from North Carolina’s 13th district. If you missed it, feel free to click on this link to read all about him!
Next week, I will profile Rep. Gabe Amo from Rhode Island’s 1st district. It will be the last of this series until 2025. See you then!
Rep. Jeff Jackson (North Carolina-14)
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