John,

Last week, I told you not to worry about a government shutdown. I’m standing by that.

Here’s what just happened:

As expected, the Speaker’s first move was to pretend to agree with his right-flank and tell them he was going to support their demands in exchange for them agreeing to not shut down the government.

He even said he’d call their version of a short-term funding bill for a vote last week.

But the day before the scheduled vote, he canceled it. Opposition from the rest of the majority party had grown to the point where the vote was likely to fail.

So my prediction from last week is still on track. In summary, here’s what it was:

The Speaker will initially set the course his right-flank wants, knowing the ship will hit rocks pretty quick. Once that happens, he’ll tell them, “Sorry, but it looks like we have to change course.” Then he’ll pivot in the direction he was always going to go - toward a bipartisan deal, which is the only kind that can pass both chambers. That deal will give the right-flank zero of what they want, so they’ll get mad, but their anger will be mostly pretend and we’ll all move on.

But we’ll see next week! Maybe he’ll make another move, but feels like we’re close to the endgame on this.

Campaign update: The attack ads begin tomorrow

Two weeks ago, I told you that my election for Attorney General could easily come down to the commercials that run on shows like Wheel of Fortune, Judge Judy, and Family Feud.

Well, I’ve got a pretty big update for you.

This chart shows the TV time that my opponent and the super PAC supporting him have reserved. It’s purchased in week-long blocks and almost all of it will be attack ads.

You can see that my opponent will advertise in all six major media markets in North Carolina.

Meanwhile, the super PAC supporting him will focus on the three largest media markets. Its ads will likely all be attack ads against me.

But check out the part I highlighted in red.

The reason those two red blocks are important is because I was scheduled to start my advertising the following week, on September 24th.

Which means, they saw my schedule and decided to put some extra money into going up a week early in those two regions.

Why?

So the first thing people will see about me will be their attack ads.

In short, they’re trying to punch me in the nose before I can introduce myself. They want the first impression to be a negative one in the two largest markets in our state.

And you know what they say about first impressions. Very powerful stuff.

Which is why our first impression needs to come from us, not my opponent’s super PAC.

Otherwise, hundreds of thousands of voters who don’t know that I exist yet will see a solid week of attacks against me before I can say anything. We can’t allow that to happen if we want to win a 50/50 race.

So look, I’m being very straightforward here: We are counting on this email to help fund an extra week of TV in those two markets.

Everything we raise through these links will go directly to get us up on TV in those markets: here’s the ActBlue option, and here's the non-ActBlue option. Both go directly to us.

If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:

And to answer your question, no, I have no idea what the attacks will be. I’m sure it will be some version of things you’ve seen before about other candidates. They tend to follow the same script, just plugging in different names.

Our campaign is extremely fortunate that this newsletter has grown to the point where we can put out this call and there’s a good chance we’ll get a strong enough response to fix the problem. I truly appreciate it.

I’ll report back in the next email. I’ll also show you our opening ad, which is a 30-second spot about who I am and why I’m running for Attorney General.

And thank you. Very grateful.

Best,

Jeff Jackson

P.S. - Last week, many of you signed up to join our quarterly Zoom campaign update. It was scheduled for this Wednesday. In light of all this action, I think it will be a much more interesting discussion if we push it to next Wednesday, September 25th. I’ll be able to show you the ads and we’ll have much more to discuss. If you’ve already RSVP’d, you’ll get an email about it. And if you haven’t RSVP’d and you’d like to join us, you can do that here. Hope to see you then.