Dan Bishop's tough on crime talk clashes with his votes to deny police funding

Republican Rep. Dan Bishop is campaigning to be North Carolina’s next Attorney General on a platform of restoring law and order, but while in office, he consistently voted to deny funding to law enforcement and victims of violent crime.

Bishop represents North Carolina’s eighth district in the U.S. House of Representatives. He launched his bid for Attorney General last year. 

The FBI reports that crime rates have consistently fallen since 2020. In North Carolina, both violent and property crime rates have decreased by 15% in the last decade. Despite this, voters still rank public safety as a top concern in the upcoming election. Bishop has seized on this fear with several social media posts claiming crime is out of control.

“Democrat governance brings disorder and danger to our cities … ” Bishop posted on X in January. “When I’m AG, we’ll support our law enforcement 24/7/365 to keep our streets safe.”

In September 2022, however, Bishop opposed two major crime bills: the VICTIM Act and the Break the Cycle Act. Both bills would have given local police departments resources to improve investigative practices and develop violence prevention strategies. 

Each bill passed the House with bipartisan support but stalled in the evenly-divided Senate.

In 2021, Bishop opposed renewing the Violence Against Women Act. The renewal included new provisions to combat human trafficking and improve law enforcement in tribal communities, both of which could have directly benefited Bishop’s constituents.

North Carolina ranks twelfth in the nation for the most human trafficking. The city of Charlotte, portions of which are in Bishop’s district, is a hotbed for this activity. Bishop’s district is also home to the Lumbee Native American tribe. Since 1998, there have been 31 unsolved cases of missing Native American women in North Carolina.

Prior to joining Congress, Bishop was a state senator. In 2019, he voted to kill an appropriations amendment that would have increased the annual North Carolina Department of Justice budget by $3 million.

Bishop has also shown hostility toward federal law enforcement.

In 2023, Axios reported that Bishop and other House Republicans were considering slashing budgets for the FBI and the Justice Department. At the time, House Republicans claimed the federal government was unfairly targeting conservatives, particularly former President Donald Trump. No evidence was ever produced to support these claims.

Bishop’s Democratic opponent in the Attorney General race is Rep. Jeff Jackson. A Bishop campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions for this story.