{"id":11078,"date":"2012-04-17T09:58:50","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T13:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raleighpublicrecord.org\/?p=11078"},"modified":"2012-10-05T11:18:04","modified_gmt":"2012-10-05T15:18:04","slug":"n-c-house-district-39-darren-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/2012-primary-election-voter-guide\/2012\/04\/17\/n-c-house-district-39-darren-jackson\/","title":{"rendered":"N.C. House District 39: Darren Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Name:<\/strong> Darren Jackson
\nParty:<\/strong> Democrat
\nOccupation:<\/strong> Attorney
\nTime in District:<\/strong> Almost 42 years
\nEndorsements:<\/strong> None
\nAmendment One:<\/strong> Against\n<\/div>\n

What is the central issue of this election?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, my election is the primaries in May- it\u2019s not November. So, I would say in May the No. 1 issue is going to be Amendment One. I imagine it will be what will drive turnout. I know there are a lot of primaries and a lot of professional races and things of that nature, but I think the No. 1 thing that we\u2019re going to see people talking about and political ads being run on both sides is Amendment One. It\u2019s already an issue people are asking about. I expect that\u2019s only going to get more intense as people realize more about the pros and cons and unintended consequences. I imagine we\u2019ll get a lot of questions about it.<\/p>\n

What are the specific issues facing your district?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Education and jobs \u2014 the same things that are affecting everyone\u2019s districts. In my specific district, eastern Wake County, if you were to look at the schools for Wake County, most of your schools with free-and-reduced lunch, high levels of free-and-reduced lunch students are in eastern Wake County and a lot of single parent households, one parent incomes. So we don\u2019t have the advantages that they have in other parts of the county, so education is very important. We\u2019d like to see the opposite of what\u2019s happened in the last couple of years. We need additional help in schools, lower student-teacher ratios. We\u2019re going the opposite direction with the last couple of budgets- we\u2019ve been cutting those kinds of things.<\/p>\n

Also, because state government being here in Raleigh, a lot of the affordable housing in Wake County is out in eastern Wake County, so I have a lot of state employees and of course the layoffs in state government have hurt my district particularly hard. The fact that we\u2019re probably looking at another budget hole coming up July 1 and maybe have more cuts concerns me.<\/p>\n

Why should your constituents elect you? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I hope I\u2019ve done a good job, I believe I\u2019ve done a good job and I hope they recognize I\u2019ve done a good job. One of the things, especially in a primary election, that I would ask my opponents is \u201cwhat would they do different?\u201d A vote they could point to that the think that they think I voted against the interests of constituents or that I\u2019ve done something different from something they would have done. I think the answer to that is \u201cno.\u201d in addition to that I\u2019ve tried to be more involved. From the very beginning, I\u2019ve said that one of the things that separates this part of the county is we have a lot of unorganized precincts, it\u2019s just not very politically active, there\u2019s nothing to do with clubs in the area and so I\u2019ve tried to do a good job of reaching out to constituents through various things. I go to everything I\u2019m invited to. Every church event, no matter how many or few people are going to be there, every rotary club event, anything I\u2019m invited to like that. I\u2019ve started a newsletter. If anybody wants to get it, they just send me an email. Every email I get, I add them to my newsletter list. We\u2019re up to a few thousand people on that list. I just sent it out last week, I sent out my 36th newsletter in three years to let people know what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

In addition to that, I\u2019ve done town hall meetings in every town I represent, because I represent parts of Knightdale, Wendell, Zebulon, Knightdale, and Garner. In three years, I\u2019ve had eight town hall meetings. Those town hall meetings are not only attended, sometimes covered by the media, they\u2019re also taped and run on local television. So, I feel like I\u2019ve done what I can to let people know that not only am I their representative, but what I\u2019m there to do for them, how I can help, and how they can reach me and try to let them know what I\u2019m doing in Raleigh, what\u2019s going on in Raleigh, how they can be more involved. Because of all those reason, I feel I deserve to be re-elected.<\/p>\n

What are the biggest accomplishments and failures of the NC House over the last two years?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to really struggle to think of an accomplishment. Let\u2019s start with the failures. There are a lot of failures that come to mind. Probably the one that impacts the most people is the budget. It has the widest range of effect. From social services to Medicaid to education, it affects a lot of different people and it\u2019s definitely not the way I would have gone. I certainly could not have voted for a budget like that.<\/p>\n

You hear about the war on women. We had a lot of bills that I can understand why women felt like they were targeted, and I think we went just the totally wrong direction on those issues. That was very disappointing. I would have thought that a party that campaigned on smaller, more efficient government and jobs would have come in and focused on that and not all these other various social issues.<\/p>\n

They can\u2019t tell you, not in one way, how Amendment One is supposed to bring jobs to North Carolina. The evidence is just the opposite, it\u2019s going to discourage jobs and people coming to North Carolina. There\u2019s companies who have actually spoken out against Amendment One, said that they would consider things like that when they make decisions where to put new server farms and new databases and all kinds of things. That\u2019s very disappointing. I\u2019m still hopeful that people in North Carolina that are going to vote that down in May. It\u2019s really going to depend on turnout, but a lot of people are standing up and talking about Amendment One. So I\u2019m hopeful that that which could be a bad thing could be avoided.<\/p>\n

If you would have asked me at one point, the accomplishment, I probably would have said getting out of session shorter, having a shorter session, but the truth is, we\u2019ve gone back so many times, it\u2019s not really been shorter – it\u2019s just been a waste of time. A lot of breaks, we\u2019ll go back for a couple of days, then go back for a day or two- we just need to get our work done and get out of town and let people go on with their lives and plan on things. The way it is now, you can\u2019t plan anything. You can\u2019t plan a vacation, you can\u2019t plan to do things because they might call you back into session for nothing.<\/p>\n

Also, the stopping of the red route. The DOT had put out a proposed route that was called the red route that would split Garner in half. It would split the industrial park in half and it was just making a mess of the town. It was cutting some subdivisions off, it was going through a new senior center. Sales of homes and everything had just stopped in Garner while that red route was on the table. Through a bi-partisan effort, we were able to get that bill passed in about a week and a half. As soon as that happened, the developer that was selling the senior community center, he signed a contract, within about two days he had several sales since then. Homes sales have picked up. We\u2019ve had several companies announce that they were coming in the spring to the industrial park. It basically just opened Garner back up to business. Before everyone got so partisan in the session, that was something both sides could work on and get passed. That\u2019s what it\u2019s supposed to happen.<\/p>\n

What is your guilty pleasure?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a guilty pleasure, but I drink a lot of Pepsi. I love Pepsi. I also like a lot of sweets. I run- I run a lot. I tell people I run just so I can eat whatever I want to eat. But I do often like to have a piece of cake or something like 9 or 9:30, even though you\u2019re not supposed to have that. But I do like to sit and watch TV and have a piece of cake sometimes.
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N.C. House District 39: Darren Jackson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24040,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[577],"tags":[624,189,194,622],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24040"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}