While outgoing UNC President Tom Ross is sometimes mentioned as a potential candidate for U.S. Senate, there’s another academic whose transition to politics might come more naturally: Gene Nichol, law professor and Director of the Poverty Center at the University of North Carolina.

A target of Republicans in the legislature, a Nichol candidacy isn’t as outlandish as it might seem. It helps that Nichol has previous runs for Congress under his belt – just not in North Carolina. In 1998, while living in Colorado, Nichol ran for the U.S. House of Representatives, losing in the Democratic primary. Two years earlier, he had competed unsuccessfully for his party’s nomination for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

For a look at what a Nichol candidacy might entail, just take a look at some of the scathing editorials he’s written directed towards Governor McCrory and the Republican legislature. A fiery and unabashed liberal, Nichol wouldn’t hold back anything against Richard Burr and the Republican Congress. And it helps that what looks like the defining issues of 2016 – income inequality, poverty, and health care – are things he’s worked on for years. Like him or not, he’d be hard to ignore on the campaign trail.

Republican legislators have certainly had a hard time ignoring him. Many feel that the closure of the Poverty Center was punishment for Nichol’s speaking out. And last week, after he wrote a column criticizing the state’s new voter ID law. the State Senate introduced a provision at the last minute which would cut $3 million in funding for UNC Law, a move which some saw as retribution for Nichol’s employer. Bills that would make it a felony to feed, shelter, or otherwise aide Nichol could be forthcoming.

Despite the instant credibility that being targeted by the General Assembly brings him with the Democrats’ progressive base, there are a number of drawbacks with a Nichol candidacy. The first is the same that would be confronted by a Tom Ross candidacy: both would be better-poised to run for an office statewide in response to the legislature’s actions, not against Richard Burr, who is relatively innocuous by comparison. The second is that Republicans would attempt to tie Nichol to John Edwards and would use the legislature’s closing of the Poverty Center as a way to discredit him. Fair or not, these are the kind of obstacles he would have to overcome to mount a credible bid.

And, of course, it’s worth noting that Nichol hasn’t given any indication that he wants to seek political office – at all. Still, Democrats don’t have a candidate for Senate yet and if Hagan declines, they might have to start thinking outside the box. Maybe they should start with Nichol. Regardless of what Hagan does, I’d be willing to bet he’d fire up liberals in a way that she can’t.

8 Comments

  1. Dan Bennett

    I personally would find it most refreshing to have a great orator and a liberal to tell it as it is. Someone who could debate Sen. Burr. The comments that I have read about the suggestion of Nichol running sounds like they want Sen. Burr to remain in office. It does not matter who runs because Republican PACs (most from out of state) are going throw lots of money into the campaign and sling mud. This is not an amusing idea. Let’s give the voters a true chose.

  2. Jimmy Rouse

    I still like Bev Perdue. She went off to Harvard and now she is back. A natural is what Bev is, a natural.

  3. Chris C

    Gene Nichol is a great, great man, but do you really think that anyone could win a contested statewide race in North Carolina, if the majority of his or her Wikipedia article is about two controversies: taking down a cross in the old chapel of William & Mary, and allowing a “Sex Workers’ Art Show” on campus? I mean, the GOP attack ads write themselves.

  4. Bob

    Nichol as a Senate candidate would be a disaster for Democrats. The GOP would hang every liberal albatross around his neck they could find and the whole party would go down. Nichol excites just a portion of the traditional NC Democratic base. I’d love to see him run in a Democratic primary because he could get credible Democratic candidates to move left a la Bernie Sanders in the presidential race.

    • TY Thompson

      Burr needs a real challenge but the challenge for Dems will be finding a candidate that the base can support without driving away mainstream voters who are just aching for an excuse to either vote against Burr or stay home altogether.

  5. Apply LIberally

    The ringleader behind cutting UNC-CH Law in retribution of Nichol’s positions, Sen. Apodaca, continues to carry forth the GOP’s spiteful and punitive de-funding actions as well its capricious and impetuous parliamentary maneuvering in the NCGA.

    We may need to wait a few years before these truly mean-spirited GOP legislators get their political comeuppance, but when they do, they will have earned it in spades

  6. Groovy

    Worth noting that Tom Ross recently said, “Who I am has never changed. I am a lawyer.” And I’m pretty sure he’s not running.

  7. Russell Scott Day

    I’ve given you indications and said I intend to run for US Senate from NC. I am not kidding. In fact I am the real thing as a real Working Class person who instantly said when the Poverty Center 250,000 money was to be spent to study poverty: “War and Corruption make people poor.”

    It will be my tactic to use youtube, since the only battlefield for the sane revolutionary is TV Land.
    Transcendian is the youtube channel of my own.

    You can find the necessary “Politicians Book” Poor Buzz & Stories from Warnings for my Daughter if you want to find out where I am coming from.

    Otherwise be assured I would represent Engineers and work to free the political prisoners imprisoned for marijuana. Ending the War on Drugs would reduce police departments workload by 30 percent. It is a war on the counter culture left living and withdrawn, along with the legacy individuals who may just be trying to grow a cash crop on the small family farms bereft of income from tobacco.

    I have nothing at all against Nichols, but did announce my intentions first. Albeit on my youtube and on my site http://transcendia.org/wordpress.

    I am the Vice Chair for the Town Hall Precinct of the Democratic Party. Matt of the Orange County Chapter gave me some reason that he wouldn’t put out any Press Release announcing my intentions.

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