The “I Don’t Know” Heard Around the World
At the Republican gubernatorial debate, Burt Jones asked Rick Jackson about a New York Post report alleging that illegal immigrants had worked at Jackson’s home.
Jackson’s answer was simple.
“I don’t know.”
That answer is now the centerpiece of a Jones campaign ad, and, politically speaking, it is easy to understand why. It is short, memorable, and it lands directly on the central tension in Jackson’s campaign message. Jackson has made illegal immigration a major part of his pitch to Republican voters, so when he is asked whether unauthorized workers were on his own property, “I don’t know” is not where he wants the conversation to end.
But let’s call balls and strikes here.
There is a perfectly plausible version of Jackson’s explanation. Most people who hire a tree company, roofing company, landscaping company, or construction crew do not personally verify the immigration status of every worker who shows up. They hire a contractor, the contractor brings a crew, and the homeowner reasonably assumes the contractor is responsible for employing people legally. This is not some exotic loophole, but how a lot of ordinary work gets done in the real world.
I have had that experience myself. I hired a tree company to take down some trees and clean up overhanging branches in my backyard. I asked whether the workers were legal, and I was assured they were. When the crew arrived, I tried to make conversation with a couple of the workers and got blank stares in return. That does not prove anything, and I want to be careful not to suggest that a language barrier equals illegal status, because it absolutely does not. But it does illustrate the point: once you hire a company, you are not personally conducting employment verification on the people who step out of the truck.
So if Jackson’s defense is that he hired a landscaper, and the landscaper hired and managed the workers, then yes, that is a plausible explanation.
But that is not the end of the story.
The New York Post story does not describe a single afternoon job where a crew showed up to trim trees and disappeared. It describes allegations arising out of a worker’s compensation case involving work at Jackson’s estate, and it includes claims about workers doing landscaping and property maintenance over time. The article also reports that Jackson acknowledged he did not use I-9 forms to vet certain workers, while Jackson’s side argues that the relevant worker was hired by his landscaper, not by him directly.
That is where the facts matter.
If these were truly employees of an independent contractor, Jackson has a much stronger explanation. If, however, workers were being directed, managed, paid, or functionally employed through Jackson’s own operation or related entities, then the contractor defense becomes less clean. That does not automatically prove Jackson knowingly employed illegal immigrants, and it certainly does not mean every claim made in a campaign ad should be accepted at face value.
But this is the difference between a legal question and a political one.
The legal question is whether Jackson knowingly employed unauthorized workers or had a duty to verify them. That may depend on facts that are not fully established in the Post article or in a debate exchange.
The political question is simpler. If you are running for governor as a hardliner on illegal immigration, voters are going to ask whether the same standard you want enforced statewide was observed on your own property.
Jackson may have a complete and credible explanation. He may be able to show that the workers were hired by an outside contractor and that he did not knowingly employ anyone who was unauthorized to work in the United States. If so, he should say that clearly, provide the cleanest version of the facts, and let voters judge it.
But “I don’t know” is not that answer.
It may be honest. It may even be legally sufficient. And the truth is that none of us will know until that process works its way through the legal system. But in a Republican primary where immigration is one of the defining issues, it leaves a lot of room for an opponent to fill in the blanks.
