Top Democrat to leave NC legislature, as Gov. Cooper appoints him to Court of Appeals
Darren Jackson, the Knightdale lawyer who has been the top Democrat in the N.C. House of Representatives for the past several years, is moving to a different branch of government.
Jackson will resign his seat at the legislature and has been appointed to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper announced Wednesday.
“Darren Jackson has spent his legal career fighting for a more fair and just North Carolina,” Cooper said in a press release announcing the news. “His decades of experience as a lawyer and elected public servant have prepared him for the bench, and I’m grateful for his willingness to continue serving our state with honor.”
In North Carolina, judges are usually elected. But when there’s a judicial vacancy, the governor appoints someone to fill the seat.
Cooper is appointing Jackson to fill the empty Court of Appeals seat vacated by Phil Berger Jr., the son of Republican Senate leader Phil Berger Sr. The younger Berger won a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court in November’s election.
The Court of Appeals has 15 judges, who typically meet in groups of three to decide on cases. It’s the intermediate step, for state-level civil and criminal cases, between trial court and the Supreme Court.
Jackson, a Wake County native, has represented eastern Wake County in the General Assembly for over a decade and has been a lawyer for over two decades. He’s a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill and the Duke University School of Law.
Jackson previously had decided not to run for a third term as the House Minority Leader, The News & Observer reported in November, just after the election when Republicans flipped several Democratic seats. Chatham County Rep. Robert Reives will take over the Democratic leadership role in the House.
He has spent his entire legal career at the Zebulon law firm that’s now called Gay, Jackson and McNally, according to the Wake County Democratic Party. One of the partners in that firm when he first joined was Donna Stroud, who is new the chief judge of the N.C. Court of Appeals. She was appointed to that top role on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported, and she has been on the court since 2007.
Cooper now will need to appoint someone to represent Jackson’s district in the House, which covers much of eastern Wake County stretching from the 440 Beltline around downtown Raleigh, out to Zebulon and the Nash County line.
Many vacancies for Cooper to fill
Jackson’s departure from the legislature isn’t the only one for Democrats in the days before the new 2021 legislative session is set to begin.
Democratic Sen. Sam Searcy, who represents southwest Wake County, also announced Wednesday he would be resigning to pursue a yet-to-be-named “opportunity to serve the people of North Carolina in a different capacity,” The N&O reported.
Cooper will also appoint Searcy’s successor, although Searcy has asked Cooper to pick Sydney Batch, a fellow southwestern Wake County Democrat who recently lost her re-election bid to the N.C. House.
Some of the cabinet secretaries who served under Cooper during his first term as governor are also leaving office, including Michael Regan, the head of the N.C. Department of Environment Quality.
Democratic President-elect Joe Biden plans to nominate Regan to run the Environmental Protection Agency once Biden is sworn in next month, the N&O reported.
In addition to picking Regan’s replacement to run the state environmental agency, Cooper also needs to pick new leaders for the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the Department of Military and Veteran Affairs and the Department of Commerce.
The leaders of those departments — Susi Hamilton, Larry Hall and Tony Copeland, respectively — all announced this month that would be stepping down from their roles.
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This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 9:37 AM.
