Tragedy inspired Wiley Nickel’s political career. Now he wants to go to Congress.
READ MORE
The Triangle’s battleground district
Democrat Wiley Nickel and Republican Bo Hines are vying for voters in a critical midterm race that could be decided by just a few percentage points, or less. The redrawn district could decide who controls Congress.
Expand All
This NC swing district could decide who controls Congress. Here’s what matters to voters.
Bo Hines turned from football to politics. He’s moving closer to one of his goals.
Tragedy inspired Wiley Nickel’s political career. Now he wants to go to Congress.
Voting by mail in North Carolina? Here’s everything you need to know
Where is North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District? See the map.
State Sen. Wiley Nickel’s father died from lung cancer when Nickel was in high school.
That was a defining moment for him — the moment he knew he would go into politics.
“When you go through that at a young age, you see how a health care crisis can shake a family and how important it is to make sure that everybody has access to affordable health care,” Nickel said. “So that was my starting point for getting involved in politics and public policy and I have been part of this effort to improve our public life for decades now.”
Nickel, now 46, enrolled in Tulane and Pepperdine universities where he studied politics and law, respectively.
Since then, Nickel worked on two Democratic presidential campaigns, for former Vice President Al Gore and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.
He worked on two advance staffs, for Gore and former President Barack Obama. That means he traveled ahead of the vice president and president doing a job similar to a band’s roadie.
Nickel ran for state Senate in California, a race he lost, and North Carolina, where he won and has served in the legislature since 2019.
“He is an ambitious politician,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. “And I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense — just in a descriptive sense.”
Now, Nickel wants to represent North Carolina in Congress.
“I’m running for Congress because I’m committed to changing the tone in Washington,” Nickel told McClatchy in an interview. “And that means reaching across the aisle to deliver results and solve problems. Compromise is the way you get things done in the legislature, certainly in Congress, and that’s what we need.”
13th district
North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District encompasses Johnston County and parts of Wake, Wayne and Harnett counties. It is North Carolina’s only swing district, based on past election results, meaning the voters there don’t lean toward a particular political party.
Nickel, a Democrat, is facing off against Republican newcomer Bo Hines.
Neither Nickel nor Hines are from the district, though Nickel claims strong ties because he has lived nearby in Cary — his wife Caroline’s hometown — since 2009 and represents Cary and Raleigh in the state Senate.
“That is, of course, legal, acceptable and not uncommon in American politics,” Cooper said.
Nickel’s family hails from central California, but he said he spent his childhood moving around the country due to his mother’s job as a television reporter.
It wasn’t until he worked in the Obama administration that he and his wife decided they needed to settle down. Together they’re raising two children in Cary, where he owns a criminal law firm that brought in $80,000 for him last year on top of his nearly $14,000 salary from the Senate. Nickel also invests in numerous stocks and rental properties.
Nickel, like Hines, had to win the nomination out of a large group of Democratic opponents that included former state Sen. Sam Searcy. Nickel finished with nearly 53% of the vote. Searcy, the runner-up, trailed him with only 21%.
“He did win a crowded Democratic primary that was not a ‘gimme’ for him and I think that speaks to his political acumen that he’s able to not just win, but win fairly decidedly,” Cooper said.
Political record
Because the district is politically autonomous, Nickel and Hines have tried to paint themselves as moderates since the primary.
Doing so is harder for Nickel, who has a voting record in the state Senate that can be parsed.
The conservative group Civitas Action ranks North Carolina’s lawmakers on a score from zero to 100 on whether they’re liberal (zero) or conservative (100). Nickel has a lifetime score of 14. Only three of his colleagues ranked as more liberal than he did.
“He’s not promoting socialist policies or anything, but I don’t think anybody would have called him a centrist based on his voting record in the General Assembly,” Cooper said.
State Sen. Jeff Jackson, who sits next to Nickel on the Senate floor, told McClatchy that Nickel is honest, kind and incredibly hard-working.
“Here’s the thing about Wiley: He never stops working,” said Jackson, a fellow Democrat who is also running for Congress. “He’s a machine. Going up against someone like that is a nightmare because you know that anytime you take a break he’s still going. He’s built for a race like this.
“If you told me that one of these guys was going to grind it out to win by one vote, it’s Wiley.”
Nickel said Congress needs people devoted to doing serious work and setting in place good public policy. He saw that in Rep. David Price, who is retiring at the end of his current term this year.
“He wasn’t a Twitter warrior,” Nickel said. “He’s not going on the talk shows to spout off about stuff. He’s working on legislation, and that’s what I’ve done for two terms as a state senator and what I’m really excited to do in Washington because there just aren’t enough people there who are focused on solving problems.”
Abortion, the economy
Nickel said he goes out daily knocking on doors and talking with voters about their needs. He saw a change in momentum from the voters after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June, which overturned Roe v. Wade, a landmark case that gave women the right to an abortion.
“People were fired up and ready to get out there and vote,” Nickel said. “And it’s incredibly important because we’ve got to protect the right to choose and that issue is on the ballot in a way that is incredibly important for the future of our country.”
Nickel said if elected he would vote to codify Roe v. Wade into law because only women and doctors should be making decisions regarding abortions.
But Nickel’s No. 1 concern is the economy. He said he wants to work to bring down the cost of housing in the district and address inflation by investing in U.S. manufacturing, bolstering supply chains and cracking down on price gouging.
Nickel said working in the Obama administration taught him that if he wants to make change he needs to compromise.
“You’ve got to bring a diverse group of people together, and that’s not an easy thing to do,” Nickel said. “It takes people with experience and knowing how the system works to get things done.”
Republicans blame Democrats for inflation, runaway federal spending, high gas prices and diesel prices.
State GOP Chairman Michael Whatley said those won’t get better with Nickel in office.
“Those are absolutely being caused by policies from Biden, enacted by Congress under Nancy Pelosi and her leadership, so if you look at Wiley Nickel, his first vote is going to be for Nancy Pelosi as speaker and every other vote he casts is going to be a rubber stamp on the Biden-Pelosi agenda,” Whatley said.
Nickel told McClatchy he is devoted to working with both political parties.
“I’m running for Congress because I’m committed to changing the tone in Washington and that means reaching across the aisle to deliver results and solve problems,” Nickel said.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at https://campsite.bio/underthedome or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published September 28, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Tragedy inspired Wiley Nickel’s political career. Now he wants to go to Congress.."