Dan Bishop’s Law & Order

U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, the combative conservative best known for sponsoring the so-called “bathroom bill” eight years ago, is running to make history this November as the first Republican elected state attorney general in more than 120 years. 

The last Republican elected to the office was Zeb Vance Walser, who served from 1897 to 1900. Since then, Democrats’ hold has only been broken briefly, with the appointment of Republican James Carson in 1974, who went on to lose later that same year to Democrat Rufus Edmisten. 

Bishop believes he can finally win the coveted office, even as polls show his Democratic opponent, fellow U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson, with a slight lead. Bishop has campaigned on restoring law and order, a mantra he repeats in debates and media appearances. 

Bishop has sought to portray his opponent as a radical leftist who is soft on crime and illegal immigration, and is anti-law-enforcement. He has criticized Jackson for not supporting a law that requires sheriffs to cooperate with federal authorities who want to detain undocumented immigrants charged with a crime.

Jackson is perhaps best known for his 2.2 million TikTok followers and direct-to-camera conversations with voters. He’s focused on Bishop’s record as a member of Congress’ far-right House Freedom Caucus, his vote against certifying the 2020 presidential election, and his sponsorship of House Bill 2 in the General Assembly–which critics called the most anti-LGBTQ law in the country. 

Democrats have also worked to tie Bishop to Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is running against current Attorney General Josh Stein for governor. Robinson has been dogged by a history of racist, anti-semitic, sexist, and anti-LGBTQ comments on social media and in public. Bishop has defended Robinson following stories in The Assembly and CNN that led to high-profile staff departures, calling the reporting a “meticulously-timed, coordinated character assassination.” (Robinson has denied the allegations in the articles and has sued CNN.)

Bishop said on X that he is focused on winning the attorney general’s office, not on other races. In the last month, he has not appeared with Robinson at any campaign events. Asked whether Bishop still supports Robinson, campaign spokesman Pat Ryan referred only to Bishop’s earlier post on X. 

The attorney general has a number of responsibilities: they are the state’s top prosecutor and must defend state legislators, departments, and agencies in court. The office also oversees the State Crime Lab and the N.C. Department of Justice, and defends criminal convictions in state appellate courts. And while the attorney general has no legal authority over what local district attorneys or law-enforcement agencies do, it can offer legal advice. 

State attorneys general have become more prominent nationally in recent years as ideologically aligned groups for the offices have banded together to challenge corporations or federal rules. Republican attorneys general have sued the Biden administration 14 times in the last four years, on policies about protections for LGBTQ people, environmental rules, and vaccine mandates. 

Bishop is eager to join the fray. 

“I’d like to participate in that, and I’ll be a robust participant,” he told PBS NC’s Kelly McCullen in August. 

But first, he has to win. 

A Century of Precedent

For much of the 20th century, Democrats had a strong grip on the Governor’s Mansion, interrupted by just a few Republicans. And it hasn’t changed much in the 21st century. 

Pat McCrory is the only Republican elected governor in the past 32 years. And in two cases in recent history, the attorney general’s position was a stepping stone to governor—Mike Easley and Roy Cooper served several terms each before winning election to the top office, and Stein is attempting to do the same. 

Chris Cooper, political science professor at Western Carolina University (and no relation to Roy Cooper), said incumbency explains much of why Democrats have held on to the attorney general’s office. Challengers are more likely to win open seats than ones with incumbents, he said. 

“And so, if the Democrats are just holding on to that office, tooth and nail, once they get it, the Republicans just really can’t break in.”

And because Democrats controlled North Carolina for a long time, “There just haven’t been many chances for the Republicans to take over,” he said. 

In 2010, though, Republicans took over both chambers in the General Assembly for the first time since 1898. And the party has slowly gained a foothold in the Council of State seats and state judicial races. Republicans now have an 11-4 majority on the Court of Appeals and a 5-2 majority on the state Supreme Court. 

In the past two election cycles, Republicans have gotten close to winning the AG race. State Sen. Buck Newton lost to Stein by just 24,000 votes in 2016. Then, in 2020, Stein narrowly defeated Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill by just under 14,000 votes. 

Cooper said this year’s race is just as close yet quieter than he had expected. 

“If you looked at this in April, you’d say, ‘Hey, we’ve got two sitting members of Congress, both with some national profile, running for attorney general, this is going to be a barn burner of a race, right?’… But I think between the presidential race and the gubernatorial race, this has been sleepier than we thought.” 

Mitch Kokai, senior analyst for the conservative John Locke Foundation, said this year is the first time Republicans believed they had a candidate who could win. But that momentum might have gotten tempered by Jackson winning the Democratic primary earlier this year, he said. 

“Any advantage that Dan Bishop might have had being a member of Congress was negated by the fact that his opponent is also a member of Congress and has, probably at least in some respects, a larger following,” Kokai said. 

Bishop has responded by casting his opponent as a leftist whose support of “woke policies” has allowed crime to increase, driven by what he says is the country’s open borders allowing in violent criminals. (Studies have shown that undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than American citizens.)

In one of his first ads, Bishop, dressed in a dark blue button-down shirt, asks the question at the center of his campaign, “Do you and your family feel safer than you did a few years ago?” He then pledges that he will end “woke crime policies,” restore law and order, and keep people safe. 

Earlier this month, Bishop filed suit against Jackson’s campaign and other defendants in Union County Superior Court, alleging that they conspired to spread “defamatory” information about his legal career through a survey conducted by a marketing firm. The lawsuit alleges, without evidence, that Jackson’s campaign and other defendants, hired the firm. It also makes tenuous connections between the firm, the defendants, and a New Republic article that alleged Bishop represented organizations with questionable business practices. 

Jackson dramatically out-raised Bishop February 18 to June 30, $4.2 million to $1.4 million. Jackson has maintained a slight lead over Bishop during the election cycle, according to several polls. Carolina Journal just reported that Jackson has a three-point lead over Bishop. 

The odds may be steep, but Bishop’s political career shows he’s tenacious. 

Bishop’s Vision

Bishop, 60, first entered politics in 1997 when he ran for a seat on the Charlotte City Council. A graduate of UNC Law School, Bishop had just started his legal career, focusing on civil litigation in business and local government. 

He lost, but he didn’t retreat. He stayed active in Republican politics. In 2000, Bishop used his legal skills to represent the North Carolina Republican Party, when it sued Mike Easley, who was running for governor, over public records. A judge later ruled against the party. He continued practicing law and seven years after he first lost, he beat fellow Republican Carla DuPuy for a seat on the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners. 

And he found that his legal skills paired well with his elected duties. He once badgered Mecklenburg County general manager Bobbie Shields about economic incentives, even though Bishop was on the losing side of the vote. 

He gained a reputation for cordial yet sharp attacks on Democrats. Dumont Clarke, a Democratic commissioner, told The Charlotte Observer that Bishop was a “true red conservative” and a sharp interrogator. 

Bishop relished his sometimes confrontational reputation. 

“There are a lot of people who think we should never have any partisan disagreement over anything and we should just get along,” he said in a 2005 Charlotte Observer profile. “I don’t think that’s serving anyone. I think it’s very important to be pleasant to people and be professional with them, and to actively look for points of agreement, but it’s also just as important to tell them when they’re wrong.”

Bishop stirred up controversy when he opposed a non-discrimination ordinance that county officials wanted to pass in 2005—establishing a theme for his political career. In 2008, he left the commissioner’s board and returned to private practice. But he remained outspoken. In 2012, he became a prominent proponent of a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. 

But the peak of his status as a hard-line conservative emerged in March 2016, after he won a seat in the state House of Representatives. 

From the very beginning, Paul Stam, a former Republican state House representative, said two things struck him about Bishop—he was a good lawyer and was solidly conservative. And he knew how the system worked, after having already served in elected office, Stam said.

“He was not a neophyte,” he said. 

Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, said Bishop took the seat of her friend, Ruth Samuelson, a Republican who stepped down and later died from cancer. Samuelson had built a reputation as a bipartisan legislator. Bishop was the opposite, she said. 

“He was not Ruth Samuelson by any stretch of the imagination,” Harrison said. “Much more conservative. Much more of an ideologue.” 

In 2016, upset that the Charlotte City Council was trying to pass a non-discrimination policy that covered gender identity and sexual orientation, Bishop co-sponsored House Bill 2, which not only stopped the ordinance but also prohibited transgender people across the state from using bathrooms or other public facilities that aligned with their gender identity. Republicans quickly passed the bill and McCrory signed it into law. 

The national backlash to the so-called “Bathroom Bill” was intense. Performers canceled concerts. Sports conferences such as the ACC pulled championship tournaments out of the state. North Carolina saw governments in other states tell their employees not to visit. An Associated Press analysis said the bill would cost the state $3.76 billion in lost business over 12 years, an amount that some Republicans hotly disputed. 

Bishop didn’t back down. 

Former state Rep. Chuck McGrady, a fellow Republican, wanted to mitigate the damage he saw House Bill 2 doing to North Carolina and tried to work with Bishop to repeal the law. Bishop wouldn’t have it, McGrady said. At the time, many Republicans tried to get the law wholly or partially repealed in light of the negative attention and a federal lawsuit. 

“I just found him not helpful,” McGrady said. “He was very doctrinaire.”

The law was eventually repealed. Bishop moved on. He won a seat in the state Senate, and three years later, he sought a seat in Congressional District 9 (after redistricting, he ran for a seat in District 8). The race was already contentious before Bishop entered. During the 2018 midterms, a political operative connected to GOP nominee Mark Harris was accused of ballot-tampering. The state board of elections ordered a new election. Harris didn’t run again, and Bishop won against Democrat Dan McCready by fewer than 5,000 votes. 

He immediately became a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, which sought House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s removal. He also celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade and has railed against Critical Race Theory, a concept taught in law school that many conservatives falsely suggest is being taught in public schools. He has introduced legislation to “defund” efforts to promote Critical Race Theory with federal tax dollars and to ban its use in the military. 

In August 2023, he announced in a radio interview that he had tired of Washington, D.C. politics and planned to come home and run for attorney general. He saw the office as a chance to leverage his legal skills once again to “restore law and order to our cities.” 

“It’s a great potent office to protect the rights and freedoms of North Carolinians,” he told WBTV. 

Bishop declined a request for an interview or to answer specific questions via email. But his campaign did provide a statement setting out what his priorities would be as attorney general. At the top of his list would be working more intensely with district attorneys and law-enforcement agencies, something he claims his Democratic predecessors have failed to do. 

“Over 75 sheriffs and district attorneys have endorsed me for attorney general,” he said. “Many of them tell me the current attorney general has had little to no communication with them over the past eight years. That is unacceptable, especially given the atrocious murder and rape figures reported in this state over the past decade.” 

(Bishop was criticized last month for sharing and then deleting false information about national crime statistics. According to the State Bureau of Investigation, violent crime in North Carolina went up 27 percent between 2014 and 2023; murder increased nearly 58 percent while rape was up nearly 65 percent over the same period. But overall crime decreased by 19 percent.)

John Midgette is the executive director of the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association, which recently endorsed Bishop. He said Bishop has done something that other previous attorney generals haven’t done—pledged to work more with law-enforcement officers and ensure that rank-and-file officers are represented on the state’s training and standards commissions. 

Bishop has also promised that if he is elected, his assistant prosecutors will do more to defend law-enforcement officers accused of misconduct. 

“We believe the average officer exceeds the needs of our citizens, and we need the entire law-enforcement community, including judges, DAs, and police, to be in this together,” Midgette said. 

Bishop said he would defend all the state’s laws if North Carolina is sued. Democratic attorneys general, such as Stein, have been selective at times about what law they will defend. That included House Bill 2 and Voter ID. 

The first iteration of the Voter ID law happened in 2013, after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a section of the Voting Rights Act that required states and counties to seek prior approval for election law changes. The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals struck down the law, and Republicans castigated Stein for withdrawing an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

“People can have their own opinions about whether they agree or disagree with the General Assembly’s policy choices,” Bishop said in his statement. “But those viewpoints should have no bearing on whether the attorney general upholds his legal duty to defend those policy choices.”

Dawn Blagrove, executive director of Emancipate NC, a nonprofit that fights against racism and mass incarceration, is no fan of the previous attorneys general, but Bishop, in particular, concerns her.

“He has presented himself as someone who has no concerns about fear mongering,” she said. 

Blagrove said Bishop has no intention of using the office of attorney general to create “equitable conditions” in the state. Republicans already have the General Assembly and the state Supreme Court. The attorney general should act as a check on the executive and legislative branches of the government, she said.

“If we elect Dan Bishop, there will absolutely be no barriers in place, no guardrails in place, to protect the marginalized people of North Carolina,” Blagrove said. 

Raising the Profile of the Office

The attorney general was once a lower-profile position that had consistently been used as a platform to run for higher office. But these days, attorneys general make a lot of noise. 

The change started during the Clinton administration. 

“I often refer to the tobacco settlement of the late ‘90s as really the big bang of AG activism,” said Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University. “This is really what got them involved in much more national politics and on the national stage.” 

State attorneys general pooled their resources together to force tobacco industry leaders to reveal what they had known about the health risks of tobacco use and when they knew it. That led to a historic $206 billion settlement, according to a 2017 report Nolette wrote. That settlement opened the door for attorneys general in both parties to find ways to influence national policy. 

Nolette notes that Democratic attorneys general, led by Eliot Spitzer of New York, aggressively pushed the federal government to enforce environmental regulations. That kind of legal action reached a peak during the Obama administration, prompting an increasing polarization of the office nationally. 

During the Biden administration, Republican attorneys general have been especially active, filing 14 lawsuits contesting environmental regulations and vaccine mandates. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has led multi-state lawsuits over Biden’s energy policy and just sued a doctor for allegedly violating the state’s ban on gender-affirming care. 

Bishop, Nolette said, has proved himself a partisan warrior. 

“There’s a possibility that if he’s elected, the AG’s office could become even more of an activist AG’s office under his leadership as opposed to under Josh Stein,” he said. 

How Bishop operates as an attorney general also would depend on who wins the presidency—Vice President Kamala Harris or Trump. Nolette said a Harris victory would guarantee that Bishop would join with other Republican attorneys general in challenging her administration.

Bishop, however, insists that he wants to take politics out of the office. It has no role, he said, when it comes to the law. 

Yet, he also believes that the office has to shift and he is the person to do the shifting.  

“Atrophy has now taken hold of the office after Democrats have won consecutive elections for more than a century,” he said. “I intend to change that.” 

Michael Hewlett is a staff reporter at The Assembly. He was previously the legal affairs reporter at the Winston-Salem Journal. You can reach him at michael@theassemblync.com.