NC Democrats slam Dan Bishop for ‘racist’ post about Jeff Jackson’s TikTok use

One of the most important races on the ballot in North Carolina next year, which is just beginning to take shape, is already getting heated.

On Thursday, Rep. Jeff Jackson, a Charlotte Democrat, announced his campaign for attorney general, becoming the second member of Congress to join the race, after Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican who lives in Waxhaw, launched his campaign in August.

The race between Jackson and Bishop, both prominent figures in North Carolina politics, was already expected to be one of the toughest-fought contests next year, and kicked off in earnest this week with Bishop welcoming Jackson to the race by attacking him for his embrace of TikTok to reach constituents.

Calling the Democrat a “Chinese Social Media Star,” Bishop released a mock statement made to look like it was from Jackson’s campaign. It was written in Chinese, and included a translation that said Jackson was a “Tiktok star who wants to make North Carolina soft on crime” and was “helping China spy on North Carolina.” At the top, it included the logo for Jackson’s campaign.

Posting the mock statement on X, formerly Twitter, Bishop wrote that it was “for our unamerican friends.”

Democrats were quick to condemn the post as “racist,” with N.C. Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton saying that Bishop was “resorting to using dog-whistle statements against the AAPI community instead of actually discussing what he wants to do for the people of North Carolina as Attorney General.”

Responding to the post on Friday, Jackson said he wasn’t surprised by it.

“Using my logo to put out a fake press release filled with dog-whistles is, frankly, completely on brand for Dan Bishop,” Jackson said in a statement to The News & Observer. “He’s always been Mr. Culture War and that’s not what North Carolina needs in a leader.”

State Rep. Ya Liu, an Apex Democrat, called Bishop’s post “an attack on all Chinese Americans” and other Asian American communities.

And North Carolina Asian Americans Together, an advocacy group for Asian Americans, said the tweet was “vile.”

“Labeling Chinese speakers as ‘unamerican’ promotes the harmful idea that Asian Americans will always be foreign in this country, no matter how long they’ve been here and how much they are a part of our communities,” NCAAT spokesperson Jimmy Patel-Nguyen said in a statement.

“This isn’t surprising — Bishop is the person who said of the term AAPI — ‘I don’t know what that is,’” Patel-Nguyen said. “His lack of understanding and respect for Asian Americans in North Carolina and the U.S. is unacceptable. We need leaders who promote inclusivity for our communities, not hostility.”

Bishop responds to criticism from Democrats

Responding to the criticism from Democrats, Bishop told The N&O in a statement that it was “entirely unsurprising that woke liberal Jeff Jackson’s allies are defending the Chinese Communist Party-owned social media platform.”

Bishop added that the reactions to his post from Democrats were “the first of many desperate attempts to distract voters from the fact that Jackson will bring the same progressive, anti-police policies that ruined San Francisco, New York and Chicago to North Carolina.”

“I am not going to let that happen,” he said.

TikTok, wildly popular among young Americans, has received bipartisan scrutiny in Congress and state legislatures across the country, over concerns about the company’s Chinese ownership and whether the data of Americans who use the app is safe.

It’s also not the first time Republicans have criticized Jackson and other lawmakers for using the app.

Earlier this year, as Republicans on Capitol Hill held a hearing to question the company’s CEO about its potential connections to the Chinese government, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said it was “beyond reckless” for members of Congress “to still be encouraging their constituents to use TikTok despite knowing the Chinese Communist Party is mining all their personal info.”

A few weeks later, Tillis and Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas led a group of 15 other Republicans in calling for members of Congress to be barred from using the app, which they called a “de-facto, spyware app.”

Jackson, who has hailed using social media platforms including TikTok to directly engage with his constituents and explain the goings-on of Congress to them, has amassed 2.5 million followers on the app. One of his most popular videos, an explanation of what led to the crash of Silicon Valley Bank earlier this year, which is pinned to the top of his profile, has more than 64,000 comments and nearly 30 million views.

He’s also said, in response to concerns about lawmakers using the app, that he creates TikTok videos on a phone that he only uses for that purpose.

Defending his use of the app, Jackson told McClatchy in March that he had used his reach on the platform to talk about the national security concerns the app posed, and how they could be addressed.

“It was watched by millions,” Jackson said of the video. “That’s a lot more than any senator will accomplish by throwing a little rock at me.”