He cruised to 3 easy victories. Now Sen. Jeff Jackson faces the fight of his political life.
The first three times he ran for the state Senate, Charlotte Democrat Jeff Jackson cruised to easy victories. Once he was even unopposed.
This year is different.
Jackson’s District 37 has dramatically changed shape. Last year’s court-ordered redistricting took away Democratic-leaning areas of east Charlotte and added traditionally Republican precincts in the southeast.
And for the first time he has a well-funded opponent. Republican Sonja Nichols, 55, is a businesswoman and philanthropist with ties to Charlotte’s corporate community.
“It would be fair to call this my first real challenge,” Jackson, 38, told a reporter as he greeted early-voters at Myers Park High School last week.
The district, which runs south and southeast from Central Charlotte’s Elizabeth and Eastover neighborhoods to Matthews and Piper Glen, is Mecklenburg County’s most competitive Senate district. The conservative Civitas Institute’s Partisan Index moved the district from “+25” Democrat to “+2” Democrat, which means a Democrat is favored, but only slightly.
The county’s other four Senate districts are more solidly Democratic.
The District 37 race could play an indirect role in Democrats’ efforts to flip the GOP-controlled Senate.
Now Mecklenburg has just one GOP senator: Rob Bryan, who replaced Dan Bishop in then-southeast District 39 when Bishop was elected to Congress in 2019. But that district was also redrawn and now is rated “likely” Democratic by Civitas.
Democrats need a net gain of five seats — four if Democrat Yvonne Holley becomes lieutenant governor — to win control of the Senate for the first time in a decade.
Though finance reports aren’t due until later this month, Jackson said he has raised around $850,000. Nichols said she has raised around $200,000.
But Nichols is running hard. She said she and her team have knocked on more than 50,000 doors.
“I’m one of the hardest workers,” she told a reporter as early voters lined up at Bojangles Coliseum. “I always go the extra mile. There is no use running if you’re not going to put your best foot forward.”
New candidate; veteran fundraiser
A California native, Nichols is making her first run for public office. She runs Nicholant Enterprises, a company that began as a placement firm for security guards but evolved into an angel fund for small businesses. She has served on civic boards and raised money for multiple causes.
Last year she co-chaired a black-tie fundraiser for Charlotte’s Veterans Bridge Home, a group that aids military veterans. She also co-chaired The Good Friends luncheon, which raised over $500,000 for the needy. And that September she co-chaired a fundraiser for the United Negro College Fund that raised $2.3 million and brought Oprah Winfrey to Charlotte.
She said she’s running to support affordable housing, education — and educational choice in the form of “opportunity scholarships,” or vouchers. She also wants to help small businesses, particularly those run by minorities and women. She sees that as a way to build generational wealth.
“I want us to become self-sufficient,” she said.
Nichols said she voted for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008. Asked if she supports President Donald Trump, she said only, “There are a lot of things from this administration I support.”
She cites the administration’s criminal justice reform, so-called Opportunity Zones and support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs. She and her husband, an executive with Bank of America, graduated from a Florida HBCU and their three children graduated from HBCUs in Atlanta.
Nichols would be just the third Black, female Republican to serve in the General Assembly in over a century. She said some voters are surprised to see a Black Republican at all.
Like her grandparents, who were small business owners, Nichols became a Republican. She said she shares the party’s beliefs in hard work, “family” values and self-sufficiency, beliefs that have helped her in her life.
“We’ve grown up in the Black community being taught that the only way you get to vote is by being a Democrat, it’s just part of the culture,” she said. “I just want Black people to know we have a choice, and we can be represented on both sides of the aisle.”
Going viral
Jackson, a lawyer with an affinity for social media, has attracted a sizable following.
His FaceBook page has 114,000 followers. His email list numbers 250,000. Once, when he slammed a Republican budget in a floor speech, it went viral and drew an audience of more than 367,000 people from as far away as South Africa.
In one 40-minute stretch at Myers Park High, five voters stopped for selfies with him.
Jackson has championed independent redistricting, higher teacher pay and affordable housing. He supports Medicaid expansion, which supporters say would help more than 500,000 North Carolinians. Nichols said she would focus on Medicaid’s shift to a managed care model before any expansion.
“Let’s start with that,” she said. “If we can make (expansion) affordable,” that’s great.
Jackson has been campaigning heavily in the new part of his district. Though Bishop carried many of the precincts now in District 37 in 2018, Democrat Dan McCready won most of them when he ran for Congress against Bishop last year.
Jackson will miss the campaign’s homestretch. He’ll start three weeks of Army National Guard duty on Oct. 25.
Other races
Here are the other Mecklenburg Senate races:
▪ District 38: Incumbent Democratic Sen. Mohammed Mujtaba faces Republican Jack Brosch in his bid for a second term. The district cuts across central Mecklenburg from the Cabarrus to Gaston County lines. Civitas gives it a partisan index of “D+29.”
▪ District 39: Democratic newcomer Deandrea Salvador faces Republican Josh Niday in the southwest district that includes Steele Creek and Pineville. Dramatically redrawn in 2019, it’s now a “likely Democratic” district according to Civitas. The 2018 version of District 39 has been represented by Bryan, the county’s only GOP lawmaker.
▪ District 40: Democratic Sen. Joyce Waddell seeks a fourth term. She faces Republican Bobbie Shields in a rematch of their 2018 race. That year she won 75% of the vote in the east Mecklenburg district.
▪ District 41: Democratic Sen. Natasha Marcus, who beat Republican incumbent Jeff Tarte in 2018, faces Chris Cole of the Constitution Party. The north Mecklenburg district leans Democratic according to Old North State Politics blog.
This story was originally published October 22, 2020 at 11:48 AM.
