Washington, DC – This week, Mother Jones reported on the North Carolina Attorney General race, calling it “the most important race in North Carolina you haven’t heard about.” The outlet fact-checked far-right GOP extremist and candidate for NC AG Dan Bishop’s recent ad that peddles fake North Carolina crime statistics.

The article starts off calling Bishop, “…the author of the state’s infamous bathroom bill, a fan of calling abortions ‘infanticide,’ and the man who recently said ‘lawfare’ against former President Donald Trump is ‘as bad as it was [for Black people] in Alabama in 1950…’”

Key Highlights:

• “But [Bishop’s] argument that the state is suffering from out-of-control crime has a few flaws. The North Carolina police have not been defunded; after 2020, many local police budgets increased. While initially immigration surged under President Joe Biden, it has fallen dramatically after a crackdown. And there is no evidence that crime increases are driven by undocumented immigrants.”

• “A Mother Jones analysis found no configuration of data that matched these numbers. Bishop’s analysis for both rapes and murders appears to use counts, instead of rates, discounting population change, which is not best practice. And, oddly, even if using counts, the math seems to be slightly askew.”

• “…Bishop’s statistics don’t represent the trend in context and seem to involve errors.”

• “With a vocal Freedom Caucus backbencher in Congress…Bishop is one of the 20 Republicans who voted against former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and has challenged the results of the 2020 election.”
•  “One can easily imagine Bishop issuing threats concerning election integrity, following the path forged by other Republican attorneys general across the nation over the past four years challenging the veracity of the 2020 election.”

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