Q+A with Rep. Jeff Jackson

Democratic Rep. Jeff Jackson is leaving Congress to become North Carolina’s next attorney general. Jackson served one term in the House before his district was redrawn, prompting his run for AG. He is known on Capitol Hill and across the country for his activity on social media and specifically TikTok, boasting over 2 million followers on the platform. Jackson spoke with National Journal's Lauren Green about how he flipped a red seat in a state that went for President-elect Trump, what Democrats should do differently moving forward, and what he will miss about his time in Congress. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

You flipped the AG seat in North Carolina during a year when Republicans captured the White House and the Senate. How did you succeed as a candidate in that environment?

I think the key was personalizing the race, de-partisanizing the race to the extent possible, working hard to give voters a sense of who I am as a person and not just as an elected official. I think that helped us build a preemptive defense against a lot of the attacks that came, so that when they came, people already had a sense of me such that they didn't really buy some of the attack ads. I think that was really helpful. I think social media is really useful for them, for giving people a sense of who you are as a real person in real life.

Your TikTok takes a more nonpartisan approach in explaining issues. Did you have success reaching people across the aisle by running your social media that way?

It was interesting what platform people would say they knew me from. Sometimes it was TikTok, sometimes it was Instagram, and if it was like a guy in his mid-20s, it was usually Reddit. I post the same video to all these different platforms. People come up and they're like, "Hey, I really appreciate the fact that you use [Instagram] Threads to reach me." And I'm like, "You got it." Or LinkedIn—some people just know me as the LinkedIn guy. It's like 1 percent of our views, but they just know me as the LinkedIn guy.

What messaging would you like to see in the midterms as someone who had more success than many fellow Democrats in this election?

I did this ad where the last sentence was, "And I'm running for attorney general as a basically normal person," and more people quoted that to me than anything else I said in the entire campaign. So this was the election to be a basically normal person, and something tells me that message will not lose its strength going into the midterms.

Were there specific issues you chose to focus on that had positive feedback?

What’s interesting in North Carolina, at least for the AG, is there are regional issues that you hear that are very high-profile. Fentanyl is not a major issue across the state, but we have hot spots. So when you go out there, you hear that a lot. PFAS—if you go to the eastern part of the state, people want to know as AG what you're going to do to keep their water clean. And then out west now, because we've had this hurricane, it's all about the recovery. So people really see AG in a kind of regional way.

What pressure point did Democrats address poorly in this election?

I think we're going to get a lot of data in three or four weeks. I think a lot of these takes are based on exit polls. Exit polls are notoriously unreliable. We will have pretty sound data in three or four weeks, so I’ll give you a better answer.

Do you plan on helping Democrats fundraise in the next cycle?

I imagine. You're the first person who's asked me about that. I haven't really thought about that, but I imagine.

What are you going to miss about Congress?

There’s a lot that I'm going to miss about Congress. I really enjoyed the two committees [Armed Services and Science, Space, and Technology] that I was on. They were relatively bipartisan. I've met some great people. I have consistently told my constituents that what happens when the TV cameras turn off is completely different and people behave themselves so much better than they do on television, and I'm going to miss being part of some of those conversations where the circus stops and the serious people begin working.

I had some of these guys wrong. I was sure that some of these guys were genuinely out there, and as it turns out, it's their persona. I don't have any names I could give you, but you could guess some.

As someone who just ran an AG race, what do you think of President-elect Trump appointing former Rep. Matt Gaetz to be the U.S. attorney general?

Truly bizarre, even by the standards of our upcoming president. I think it would be highly unpredictable, except for one feature, which would be his total loyalty to Trump. I don't think there is any question that he would put that loyalty ahead of the Constitution. No one should have any question about that.