Story by Matthew Langston and Tyler Musialowski
Standing in front of animated toy clowns with the faces of such Democratic politicians as Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and his opponent, Dan McCready, North Carolina Sen. Dan Bishop’s message was clear.
“These crazy liberal clowns, the things they say, the way they act, what they believe,” says Bishop in his first TV advertisement. “They’re not funny, they’re downright scary.”
Bishop vows that “he’ll go to Congress and fight these clowns for you.”
For many voters, that advertisement likely served as an introduction to Bishop, a business lawyer and Republican who has served in the North Carolina State Senate since 2017. In the Senate, he is chairman of three committees: Redistricting and Elections, Appropriations on Health and Human Services, and Health Care.
That advertisement went on air before Bishop had even won the Republican primary for the special election in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District on May 14.
Some political strategists might question a candidate’s decision to go after the opposing party’s candidate on air before winning the primary of his own party. It seems Bishop was not worried about that, arguably for good reason.
Bishop defeated nine other candidates during the Republican primary and secured the Republican nomination for the state’s 9th Congressional District special election. Getting nearly 48 percent of the vote, Bishop won the primary handily, with runner-up Stony Rushing getting just 19.4 percent.
Bishop, whose campaign declined repeated requests for an interview, continued his pivot toward the general election with another TV advertisement in which he called himself the “Right Dan” in the race who is “conservative, pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-wall.”
Bishop’s campaign strategy is oriented toward appealing to the 9th District’s Republican voters and damaging McCready’s reputation as a centrist by connecting him to more liberal Democrats, such as Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez. A fear among some Republicans is that a centrist Democrat could win over enough swing voters and moderate Republicans to take the seat.
The 9th District is a perennial Republican stronghold that has not been represented by a Democrat since 1963. Given the Republican lean of the 9th District, Bishop’s strategy of tying McCready to the national Democratic Party seems viable as Bishop does not have to try to win over as many swing voters.
For Bishop, this election cycle is not his first time being in such a spotlight.
Before he was elected to the State Senate, Bishop served in the State House of Representatives from 2015 to 2017.
While in the House, Bishop got far more attention than normal for a freshman representative because he was a primary sponsor of the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, better known as HB2 or “the bathroom bill.”
He has also been criticized for his rhetoric on HB2. In response to an email from a HB2 supporter, Bishop agreed with the constituent’s use of the phrase “Politically Correct Taliban” to refer to anti-HB2 activists.
Bishop used the activist and corporate backlash against HB2 as a rallying point in his fundraising emails.
“They’ve called my home,” he wrote. “Threatened my business. And, of course, threatened my election… they want to make us into a national example – SO THAT NO ONE WILL EVER STAND UP to the radical transgender agenda again.”
According to WRAL, Bishop was the only senator who spoke out against the bill that ultimately repealed HB2. “This bill is, at best, a punt,” he said. “At worst, it is a betrayal of principle.”
Despite his previous defense of HB2, Bishop has tried to push aside the issue in this election. In a news conference in May, Bishop declined to answer a reporter’s question about whether he regretted his role in creating HB2.
Instead, Bishop said that “voters are ready to talk about new issues.”
Additionally, Bishop has been criticized for his $500 investment in Gab, a social media platform that has billed itself as an outlet for free speech. The platform has come under criticism for its popularity with white supremacists, including the gunman in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that killed 11 people in 2018.
He publicly announced his investment in the platform in an August 2017 tweet that read, “So, I’m about done with SF thought police tech giants, and so … I just invested in Gab.”
Three posts about two years ago on Gab appear to have been posted by an account run by Bishop or someone posing as the candidate. While there was nothing substantial in any of those posts, it seems Bishop potentially could have used Gab and not just invested in it.
In October 2018, Bishop backtracked on his investment, tweeting: “I don’t use Gab, but if its management allows its users to promote violence, anti-Semitism, and racism on the platform, they certainly have misled investors, and they will be gone quickly and rightfully so.”
Bishop’s strained relationship with the media extends beyond social media to the news media.
He used the phrase “jihad media” on his Twitter to criticize a reporter’s story on budget cuts to the North Carolina Department of Justice, and he used that same phrase to criticize stories by the Associated Press and CNN.
In a recent Facebook post, Bishop further illustrated his distrust for the news media by referring to the “socialist policies of the elite leftist media.”
Among others attacked by Bishop has been McCready, who has been accused of investing in a business that has outsourced production to Chinese-based companies. One of those companies, Huawei, has come under heavy scrutiny by the Trump administration – with which Bishop closely aligns himself.
Despite Bishop’s controversies, he has continued to survive politically, which is noteworthy as he is from the suburbs of Democratic-leaning Mecklenburg County.
Bishop won re-election with about 53 percent of the vote in the 2018 midterms, an election cycle that pushed many Republicans in Mecklenburg County out of office. Every other Republican state legislator from Mecklenburg County lost their re-election campaign, leaving Bishop as the sole Republican representing the state’s largest county in the General Assembly.
By all accounts, it will likely be a close race between Bishop and McCready. A recent poll by JMC Analytics and Polling found Bishop leading with 46 percent to McCready’s 42 percent, with 10 percent of vote claiming to be undecided.
Find a profile of Dan McCready here.
