Name as it appears on the ballot: Safiyah Jackson

Age: 46

Party affiliation: Democrat

Campaign website: teamjacksonfornc.com

Occupation & employer:  Non-Profit Executive with NC Partnership for Children

Years lived in North Carolina: 6

1. What in your background qualifies you to represent the people of your North Carolina district effectively? What would you cite as your three biggest career accomplishments?

Personal background: I’m a student of public schools and will always work toward high-quality, free education for all children–beginning with the youngest learners. I’m the granddaughter of a domestic worker and grew up as a latch-key kid to working parents. I know the value of hard work and understand the barriers to economic mobility.

Professional background: I’ve worked in both for-profit and nonprofit sectors, and know the strategies to ensure NC is first for business and first children. I have a wide range of professional experiences transforming ideas into action and will do the same to ensure NC remains a world-class state to live, work, and play. 

Values and Position: I believe the well-being of any community is determined by the well-being of its youngest residents. I believe our top priority is ensuring quality of life for infants and toddlers so they survive and thrive from the start–it’s the foundation of the state’s future residents, workers, and leaders These investments and policies are intergenerational and produce the greatest return: significant social returns, academic returns, and economic returns for entire communities.

Three biggest career accomplishments: 

  1. Facilitated investments in birth-to-third grade workforce training, policy, and programs
  2. Co-authored journal article “A Qualitative Metasynthesis of Consultation Process Research: What We Know and Where to Go”
  3. Fostered small business growth by identifying mutually beneficial performance metrics and co-creating business solutions. 

2. What do you believe to be the three most pressing issues facing the next General Assembly? What steps do you believe the state should take to address them?

  1. Supporting Families: We must ensure families can chart their own paths, and be trusted to know what’s best for themselves. I will respect families’ reproductive freedom. I will champion and fight for reproductive choice and family planning.
  2. Showing up for Schools: We must preserve the integrity and purpose of the public school system. I will raise teacher pay to the national average and ensure teachers have classroom supplies not classroom supply bills, including educators of our youngest learners
  3. Expanding opportunity: We must be dedicated to improving the conditions where people live and work. I will remove economic barriers like compensation that isn’t keeping pace with the rising cost-of-living; and unbearable costs of basic needs, including housing, health care, and child care.

See more at https://www.teamjacksonfornc.com/agenda

3. To what extent do you support municipalities exerting local control over issues such as regulating greenhouse gas emissions, criminal justice reforms and police oversight, and passing development-regulating ordinances?

I fully support municipalities having the autonomy to have local control over these issues. Especially when local governments are able to demonstrate innovations and higher standards that inspire across the state. This approach empowers elected officials, and the people who vote them in, to have the power to develop a vision for their community and serve as demonstration sites and inspiration to the state legislature. I also believe local governments have the ability to promote civic engagement and participation–creating a sense of belonging and agency in their communities.

4. Do you support raising North Carolina’s minimum wage, and if so, by how much? 

I applaud employers who choose to more fully compensate their labor force to be able to live in Wake County and NC. And still, too many people face impossible choices between necessities. North Carolina’s minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for the last 15 years. Working people can’t afford another 15 years of an unlivable minimum wage. When employers don’t fully cover the cost of labor–their workers’ ability to live moderately after 40 hrs of work–it becomes the state’s responsibility to mitigate the impact of poverty wages. I also strongly support paid family and medical leave programs designed to help people take paid time off of work for family or medical reasons. 

5.  What, if anything, should the state legislature do to address the growing affordability crisis and support low-income families in North Carolina?

One of my top priorities to address the cost-of-living challenges, for families earning low wages, is to tackle the cost of child care. I believe all families with young children should have access to state-funded education for little learners. We should not be a state that leaves families with the cost burden of paying for little people’s schools, especially when the true cost of care, per child, is more than the average cost of rent/mortgage. I will always work for and will not stop until all families with infants, toddlers, and children under kindergarten have access to high-quality learning environments, early childhood education. To further address child poverty, I will advocate for family tax credits Earned Income and Child Tax Credits.

6. What is your vision for transit in North Carolina? What kind of regional transit systems should the state work to implement and what kind of transit legislation would you support?

My opponent was able to secure significant funding from the Biden Infrastructure Deal. I’m thankful for those federal dollars and the additional state funds that are being invested in Southern Wake County. It’s no secret that District 37 is one of the fastest growing areas in the region. So, the current investments are really helping, but they don’t go far enough, fast enough. Too many neighbors express frustration with the expanding population growth without the relevant transit and road infrastructure. My vision is that we must start to look at how to balance revenue needs with funding the transit needs for local/regional residents, businesses and tourists. I believe North Carolina’s transportation ecosystem should include high-speed rail, promoting alternative modes of transport, and traffic management systems that optimize flow and increase capacity on high-traffic routes.

7. Would you support an independent process for drawing new legislative and congressional districts?

Yes, it is critical. We must put a stop to gerrymandering. Using an analogy, there isn’t a single professional sport where the players write their own rules. Therefore, elected officials should not be drawing the voting lines of their districts. These unfair and undemocratic approaches must stop now. NC must do better to ensure fair representation. Until we fix NC gerrymandering, Republican lines drawn with precision, Democrats will have to focus on out-organizing to overcome these suppression tactics. District 37 is one of those districts where we have been organizing to overcome manipulated maps. When we win, we will contribute to breaking the Republican supermajority. 

8. Do you support expanding funding for Opportunity Scholarships? Do you believe the legislature has a role in ensuring that private schools don’t further raise tuition on families and taxpayers with the infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars into the private school economy?  Please explain your answer.

No, public tax dollars must be invested in and prioritized for public schools. We must stop expansion of this program and focus on increasing accountability and transparency on the current hundreds of millions of public dollars. When we starve public schools, which are already underfunded, we undermine their ability to offer maximum family choice of high-quality environments. Yes, legislators should ensure caps on raising tuition because it will increase the number of families who can’t pay the cost of this elite environment and it creates an environment where private enterprise is driving the spending of public dollars. Project 2025 goals for public education are already afoot in NC and this election cycle, voters have the opportunity to stand against defunding public schools and stand for the integrity of our schools. 

9.  North Carolina is one of the lowest-paying states for teachers in the nation. Schools across the state are facing shortages of educators, support staff, and other key personnel. By what percentage should the next budget raise wages for teachers and school employees? What else can the General Assembly do to improve working conditions for teachers and make the teaching profession more attractive to potential future educators?

School employees’ pay hasn’t kept up with inflation or cost of living. North Carolina ranks 36th in average teacher salary and 46th for average starting salary. I will challenge North Carolina’s ranking as last in the nation for public school funding. We must act now to raise public school employee pay, and at significantly higher rates than the nickels and dimes we see from the current Republican-led bills. NC needs to compensate teachers and ensure more school nurses, counselors, social workers, and school psychologists. This is true for K-12 teachers and even more critical for the teaching profession before kindergarten. I will focus on increasing pay to ensure preschools and elementary schools are able to fill vacancies and retain staff. We must reinstate master’s pay and implement a classroom-supply budget, so teachers aren’t left to pay out-of-pocket for instructional supplies. Too many current teachers are, understandably, dissuading children from pursuing a teaching career because of the low wages. And I’ve met too many teachers who left the field to afford their own cost of living. This is sad and must stop! But it won’t stop until the state finally invests in and fully compensates teachers for their critical and essential contribution to our society. Families can’t afford to pay for the true cost of education, including personnel, instructional materials, technology and facilities, transportation and food services, ect. If working families can’t afford the full bill, then who pays? If the state refuses to cover the full cost, then who pays? If employers can’t afford to provide both healthcare and education as a benefit for their employees, who pays? I’m committed to ensuring our state is fiscally responsible with our obligation to fully fund a sound, basic and comprehensive education for all learners–a spectrum of nurturing learning environments that support human development from 6-weeks to 21 years old.

10. North Carolina bans abortion after 12 weeks’ gestation. Do you think abortion access in North Carolina should be expanded or further restricted, or do you support the current law? 

I will champion and fight for reproductive health and family planning. I will oppose all legislation that attempts to restrict a person’s ability to make their own reproductive health care decisions, including the decision to access abortion care, in vitro fertilization, or contraception. Healthcare decisions must be made between people and their medical professionals, not controlled by politicians who limit our personal choices based on their personal beliefs and a rejection of science and medicine. Instead of further restricting choice to control our bodies, the state should be legislating freedom—the right to chart our own paths, and be trusted to know what’s best for ourselves. 

11. Do you support reforming North Carolina’s marijuana laws? Do you support full legalization? Please explain your position. 

Yes, I support a path to legalization of recreational and medical marijuana. We should legalize, regulate, grow, tax, and reinvest. I support Senator Graig Meyers policy approach outlined in S. 346, the Marijuana Justice and Reinvestment Act. This “North Carolina way” of legalization, includes distribution similar to the state’s ABC liquor system, robust public health efforts, ensuring local growers, and use of tax revenue as reinvestment. Taking a legalized approach to marijuana, like several other states have successfully implemented, will also create the opportunity to regulate cannabis-related products like Delta-9, TCHA and others that are widely available at gas stations and convenience stores. 

12. Do you support strengthening gun safety regulations such as expanding background checks, banning bump stocks, and raising the age to buy or otherwise regulating the sales of assault-style weapons? Please explain. 

I will always work to implement common-sense gun laws like permits, red flag laws, and especially regulations on the sale of assault-style weapons that are designed to kill mass numbers of people. I received the Moms Demand Action Gun Sense Candidate Distinction as a symbol of my commitment. The increasing number of school shootings are disturbing to me and I feel a sense of urgency to address this public health crisis. The number of children and teens killed by gunfire in the United States increased 50% between 2019 and 2021, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Wake county and many counties across the state do not use weapons detectors in schools and I really want to keep it that way. However, my opponent voted to repeal gun permits–making it easier to secure a gun. Instead of making it easier to purchase guns we should be treating guns like other deadly machinery–i.e. motor vehicles. It is sensible to require training, permits, and a path to revolve use if proven harmful to others. 

13. Are there any issues this questionnaire has not addressed that you would like to address? 

Yes, the infant-maternal health crisis in this state. NC has the 8th highest infant mortality rate in the country and 8th highest maternal mortality rate. The numbers are more bleak when disaggregated for race, where black families are twice impacted and at risk. We need to urgently upend these decades old trends. There are so many proven solutions, tested innovations, clearly articulated goals, and metrics to monitor for improving infant and maternal health. I call on all pro-life advocates to turn their attention away from blocking women’s freedom to control her body and turn to ensuring momma’s and babies have what they need to survive and thrive from the state. Healthy birth outcomes should be a bipartisan issue. Join me in supporting legislation to establish and implement statewide, post-natal a comprehensive screening and connection program within a system of care. We could be the 4th state in the country with this commitment.