U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, the Republican nominee for North Carolina attorney general, is suing the campaign of his Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson, alleging defamation based on a campaign "push poll" and a partisan media article.

The lawsuit, filed this month in Union County Superior Court, names Jackson’s campaign, the North Carolina Democratic Party, the Democratic Attorneys General Association, and Dynata LLC, a company that conducts polls and surveys.

Bishop alleges that in July, Dynata conducted a political survey on behalf of the Jackson campaign and asked voters: “Would you be more or less likely to vote for Dan Bishop for Attorney General if you knew that, as a lawyer, he represented people who stole money from the elderly?”

Bishop, who practiced commercial litigation in North Carolina from 1990 until 2019, denied the allegation, stating that he has never “represented people who stole from the elderly." He claims that the question was presented as a “factual assertion” and could have been asked of hundreds of other voters.

The lawsuit also alleges that the question “vaguely echoed” a June article in The New Republic that reported Bishop had "worked multiple times with organizations accused of questionable business practices.” The article cited a 2011 case in which Bishop represented businessmen accused of trying to defraud a 78-year-old woman recovering from heart surgery. Bishop called the reporting "defamatory" and "riddled with falsehoods."

Bishop claims that the Jackson campaign and the other defendants provided The New Republic with the lawsuits and asked for the story to be published. He alleges that the defendants "cherry-picked and distorted" information about his legal career "to concoct and contrive damaging characterizations" that would undermine his chances of winning the election.

In a statement, the Jackson campaign said it looked forward to the lawsuit’s “swift resolution” and indicated that it doesn’t expect it to be successful. “Mr. Bishop says he wants to be Mark Robinson’s sidekick and we imagine this will have as much success as Mark Robinson’s legal actions,” the campaign said, referring to the Republican candidate for governor.

The Bishop campaign said it filed the lawsuit “to protect Congressman Bishop’s professional reputation against false and defamatory accusations the Jackson campaign or its allies were preparing to launch.” The campaign said it did not seek publicity about the lawsuit and that the suit does not target Jackson personally.

Bishop told WRAL News that the campaigns of former Attorneys General Roy Cooper and Josh Stein "defamed their opponents' professional legal careers" during their campaigns. “We detected preparations to do the same thing about my 30-year, frankly, distinguished legal career,” Bishop said.

In 2014, Cooper settled a libel suit from the 2000 election. In 2022, a federal appeals court blocked enforcement of an elections law at the center of an investigation targeting Stein.

“We just wanted to get that on the record," Bishop said. "It’s a warning, in fact. If that tactic is repeated again, if anybody knows anything me, we’re not going to let that pass.”