Jeff Jackson And Preferring Not To Speak
On The North Carolina Senate Seat
"Candidate quality is hard to know ahead of time, I thought Ossoff was a shit candidate when he announced, etc etc, but I really don't get the Jeff Jackson hype."
This is, as far as I can tell, the wording of the first public comments I've ever said about Jeff Jackson, a State Senator from North Carolina that people say is the best Democratic candidate for flipping the 2022 Senate race there. Note what I didn't say - that he'd be some disaster, or that I'm sure he's a bad candidate. But honestly, I don't get the Jeff Jackson thing. I've never gotten the hype, and it's really confusing. And every time I tweet about North Carolina now, I get someone asking why I don't find Jeff Jackson a good candidate.
My joke response is the video of Jose Mourinho responding to a media question when he was at Chelsea - "I prefer not to speak, if I speak I'm in big trouble, and I don't want to be in big trouble." Jeff Jackson stans are a weird bunch, assured of his electability but never able to explain why he is actually electable. So, let's actually engage with this argument, as weak and nebulous as it is.
Let's start with the fact that I get the idea of a Jeff Jackson candidacy. Jackson represents a Mecklenburg County State Senate district, and urban North Carolina is where Democrats really didn't do well enough. According to Lak's model, Joe Biden underperformed in the three major urban areas in North Carolina - by 0.7% in Mecklenburg, by 2.8% in Durham, and by 1.7% in Wake. If you think that running a moderate white from Mecklenburg would solve some of that problem, then I get the case for a candidate of that archetype. The problem? I don't get why so many think Jeff Jackson is that candidate.
Jackson underran Joe Biden by 7% in his State Senate district in 2020, and should not be read as some electoral savant. He is, at best, a mediocre candidate who underran because he was in a safe seat and voters didn't care, or at worst a bad candidate who is dangerously unpopular for a run statewide. I don't actually believe he is a disaster of a candidate because of that - as I said, candidate quality is hard to know and I thought Ossoff was shit for a long time in 2020. This shit is complex. But man, the active case for Jackson doesn't seem to exist.
Lak's map does suggest an answer, though - Cheri Beasley, the Black former North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice. The model finds Biden underperformed across the rural Black areas of the state, which is reflected in the Fox Exits, which said that Black turnout was only 19% of the electorate. Even in 2014, the massacre of Democrats nationally, North Carolina was 21% Black. As rural white turnout has surged in North Carolina, Black turnout has lagged, and lagged hard. I'm not entirely sure how the answer to that is another generic white man.
Beasley has run and won statewide, and while she lost in 2020, she outran Biden comfortably. Put her at the top of the ticket, and she can activate that latent Black vote in the way that Raphael Warnock did in places like southwest Georgia. Get higher Black turnout, and you can solve a lot of your problems. Get North Carolina back to 21% of the electorate, and you win.
Beasley wouldn't be a bad candidate for the metro areas either - boosting Black turnout, and holding stellar margins with those voters is a winning combination. Jeff Jackson has bad downside - continuing the trend of Black turnout lagging while not actually getting some huge moderate success. We know this is a real problem, because Jackson just underran Biden by 7%. Could he win? Maybe. Is he the best chance? God no.
Where Beasley has a clear path to victory, and little downside - there's no real reason to think we'll do worse in the urban metros next time, because we sucked with whites there compared to Texas suburbs or the WOW collar, so Beasley isn't going to kill us there or anything. Also, the idea of a Black candidate as a potential drag on the suburbs isn't really true, and it certainly didn't hold in Georgia two months ago.
Jackson's supporters insist that if you just talk to people, you'd understand. Someone once even asked me if I had ever spoken to the man on the phone, as if you're not allowed to comment on electability and elections if you're not getting that level of access. The belief that everyone else likes someone can sometimes be correct, or sometimes just be mythmaking. I have no idea what the actual, substantive case for Jeff Jackson, good nominee is, or where he wins votes for Democrats. With Beasley, there is a clear, definitive, falsifiable case for her candidacy. With Jackson, there's unintelligible nothingness. "Jackson will win because he's popular" is a whole hell of a lot less persuasive than "Cheri Beasley will win because of higher Black turnout, in the vain of Raphael Warnock," at least to me.
If Jeff Jackson is the Democratic nominee, I'll wish him well. But I hope I don't have to. Cheri Beasley should be the nominee, and on Jeff Jackson, well, I prefer not to speak.