Dan Bishop, Jeff Jackson talk fentanyl, Charlotte shooting, juvenile crime in AG debate

They’re both lawyers from metro Charlotte who serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

But a Friday debate showed that Republican Dan Bishop and Democrat Jeff Jackson have little else in common as they seek to win over voters in the Nov. 5 election.

The two candidates for North Carolina attorney general argued in a room full of attorneys at the Charlotte Convention Center. The debate was hosted by the North Carolina Bar Association and moderated by Spectrum News’ Tim Boyum.

At issue: drugs, juvenile crime, a recent mass shooting in east Charlotte — and each other. Like North Carolina’s gubernatorial race, the race for attorney general is shaping up to be about ideology as much as local issues.

“My top priority is securing law and order in North Carolina,” Bishop said. “Period.”

He spent much of the hour deriding Jackson, Attorney General Josh Stein, Gov. Roy Cooper and other Democrats.

Jackson had some criticism of his own. Bishop is “the classic political extremist,” he said.

Fentanyl crisis

The two had different answers to fighting the fentanyl crisis.

Opioid addiction has landed local teenagers in rehab, The Charlotte Observer reported last year. It’s killing people across the state and the country with doses as small as a pencil’s tip.

Jackson said North Carolina needs to do a better job of finding and breaking up distribution networks that push drugs in the state.

A recently passed anti-money laundering law will help that mission, he said. He voiced support for medication assisted treatment, in which drugs and behavioral therapy are used to treat people suffering from substance use disorder and withdrawals. And if elected, he would ask the General Assembly to fund a “fentanyl control unit,” he said.

“A large percentage of people in our state who are ODing are teenagers,” Jackson said. “Lots of them don’t even know that they’re taking fentanyl, but fentanyl now is laced with everything. We need to send a clear message to young people that there is no such thing as safe experimentation with drugs.”

No law will stop fentanyl from coming into North Carolina, though, Bishop said.

“The problem, if you ask a law enforcement officer or DA in North Carolina, is an unsecured border where fentanyl pours over the border,” he said.

Judges might share blame in east Charlotte shooting, Bishop says

The April 29 shooting in east Charlotte that killed four law enforcement officers also came up when Boyum, the moderator, asked Jackson and Bishop whether it’s time to look at training and equipment that police use.

“Yes, I think we’re going to end up doing that,” Jackson said, referencing an ongoing investigation into what happened on April 29.

If elected attorney general, he would push forward recommendations from that review, he said.

“This terrible tragedy should serve as a huge reminder to all of us that law enforcement is necessary, that they put their lives on the line and that sometimes they don’t come home through no fault of their own,” he said.

But that’s not enough, Bishop said.

“Words are not sufficient,” he said. “Acts are what matters.”

He referenced his voting record before throwing out some criticism of judges in Charlotte and across the state. It’s time to revisit bail, bond and pretrial release practices, he said.

“We have judges in the Mecklenburg County District Court — all over North Carolina — devoted to weakening bond practices across North Carolina,” Bishop said. “Those officers are dead. Probably some mistakes on the part — we’ll see, not gonna prejudge that — but because of the policies that are letting dangerous criminals out on the street.”

Some changes have been made to North Carolina’s bond system recently. With the General Assembly’s passage of the Pretrial Integrity Act last year, some defendants facing more serious charges have their bonds set by elected judges, not magistrates now.

Juvenile crime and courts

Juvenile crime remains a concern, especially in Charlotte, where Police Chief Johnny Jennings has said his officers are often forced to play “catch and release.”

Last week, Cooper vetoed a bill that would have required more teenagers facing criminal charges to be tried initially as adults.

The General Assembly’s Republican supermajority could overturn Cooper’s veto, and Bishop said he expects that they will.

“That bill should have been signed by the governor,” he added, pointing out a New Year’s Eve shooting at uptown’s Romare Bearden Park and a rise in young people committing crimes, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg police.

“That’s got to stop, and law and order is the key,” Bishop said.

Jackson said that judges need to be able to see a criminal record before juveniles appear in court.

“Right now, that is not happening,” he said.

“If we have a clear repeat offender, someone who is a threat to public safety, then the judge needs to be authorized to keep that person in secure custody,” he said.

It’s not helping a teenager to release them when they’ll likely be involved in another crime, he added.

Culture war

Like the race for North Carolina’s next governor and the presidential race, the culture war was a returning theme in Friday’s debate, with Jackson saying he is one of Congress’ most bipartisan members and Bishop one of its least.

“We get a few extremists (in Congress), we can handle it,” he said. “If we get an extremist in the role of attorney general, that would be a radical departure from anything we have seen in this state before.”

On multiple occasions Jackson invoked a 2022 social media post in which Bishop said that Republicans “must smash the FBI into a million pieces.”

Bishop warned that Jackson might use the attorney general’s office to further his own political agenda, and said that current Democratic Attorney General Stein and his predecessor, Cooper, did as much when they disagreed with the General Assembly on policy.

He compared them to Letitia James, New York’s attorney general who has successfully sued former President Donald Trump.

“That is the very end of law in this nation if that is permitted to continue,” Bishop said. “That is wrong.”