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April 5th , 2023 Political Note #551 Wiley Nickel North Carolina 13
2024. General Election
Wiley Nickel
I urge you to support for Wiley Nickel now. Understand, there is a possibility of a radical shift in North Carolina’s districts. Wiley Nickel could be, as he is now, in a swing district. He could be in an overwhelmingly Republican district. We have to watch the North Carolina Supreme Court to see what it does. Meanwhile…….. I suggest you donate.
Historians of American immigration disagree on whether the United States is a melting pot or a mosaic. Wiley Nickel is the melting pot type – though he is from a strain that is strong enough that his family’s impact on our country is visible.
Wiley Nickel’s wife brought him to North Carolina. Otherwise, he would be a Californian. His great, great, great grandfather owned much of central California. Henry Miller was a German who emigrated to New York City in 1846. He Americanized his name and moved on to California in 1850. A butcher in San Francisco, he and a partner purchased Spanish land grants and raised cattle. Eventually, he owned 1.4 million acres and controlled more. He owned almost as much land in Oregon and Nevada as in California.
Henry Miller’s lands were broken up after his death – divided among spoiled squabbling children according to one report. George Nickel, Jr. whose father married into the Miller family, consolidated water rights. Jim Nickel now runs the family business. Jim’s grandson, Wiley Nickel (or George W. Nickel III according to a caustic family history) went to high school in Chicago after his father died young of cancer.
Wiley Nickel’s mother’s life was a different story. He told Jewish Insider “The Jewish community, their story is my story. My mother is Jewish. My great-grandfather fled Poland prior to the Holocaust and I would not be here today if he had stayed in Poland.” Nickel’s great grandfather left Poland during the great Jewish migration from Eastern Europe — in 1907. He headed west, getting as far as Detroit. He might have been aiming for Detroit. Harry Sott met his wife in Detroit. She was from the same shtetl he was from in Poland.
Harry worked on the assembly line for the Ford Motor Company. In 1940, 48 years old, he and his wife and son and daughter were still in Detroit. Maybe it was the war. For some reason, he brought his wife and family to California and in that land of milk and honey, began manufacturing textiles. His son, Herbert, Wiley Nickel’s grandfather, got a law degree, but the firms he wanted to work in were not hiring Jews. Herbert prospered in the textile business.
Jim Nickel’s grandson and Herbert Sott’s granddaughter somehow met and married. Although Wiley Nickel recalls celebrating Passover and the High Holidays with his mother’s family, his family was not Jewish. They were Episcopalians, part of California’s upper crust.
More melting was to come. In Chicago with his mother, Wiley Nickel went to the Francis W. Parker School – a private day school. From there he went to Tulane in New Orleans and, after working for Al Gore but before his unsuccessful run for the State Senate, he went to Pepperdine’s Law School. At or through Pepperdine, he met a young North Carolina woman — Caroline Edwards. A graduate of Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh, NC, she had stayed in North Carolina to get her BA from the UNC. She went west for law school – to Pepperdine, a distinguished law school that was part of a Catholic University.
When she went to work in 2007, she made what could have been a pivotal decision. After she passed the bar, she researched constitutional law for Kenneth Starr. I don’t know what she worked on for Starr. We do know that, in 2007, Starr joined the team representing Jeffrey Epstein. Starr has vouched for Alex Acosta, the US Attorney who negotiated what some have called a notoriously generous plea deal with Epstein on charges of sexually abusing a minor.
Wiley Nickel returned to national politics in 2008, He was a campaign staffer for Barack Obama and, after the campaign, worked for Obama’s White House until 2012 initially as a staffer and then as a consultant. Caroline Edwards Nickel was briefly an associate at a Fresno, California law firm. Shortly after Barack Obama was elected in 2008, she and Wiley Nickel moved to North Carolina. Wiley Nickel continued working for Obama, but from a remote location. Regarding Caroline Edwards pivot, she was no longer likely to work for Ken Star. As for the melting pot, they remained Episcopalian.
In 2009, Caroline Edwards Nickel added a strand to her pearls. She became a corporate officer and co-owner of the family jewelry business in North Carolina. In 2010, she became an associate at a law firm in Apex, North Carolina. Twenty minutes from Raleigh, North Carolina’s capital, 25 minutes from Durham, the Duke University point in the Research Triangle, the Stam Law Firm notes in its website, how easy it is to park at its office.
Comfortably ensconced in Cary, 20 minutes outside of Raleigh, Wiley Nickel opened a law practice in 2011. For the long term, his interest was politics. He spent more than $350,000 in 2018 to win State Senate District 16. He replaced Josh Stein, a Democrat who ran for and was elected North Carolina’s Attorney General. Now Stein is running for Governor.
In the State Senate, Wiley Nickel was an advocate for teachers’ pay, for expanding the definition of hate crimes and the creation of a hate crime data base in the state. In 2018 the Democrats elected enough members of the state Senate to eliminate the Republican supermajority and prevent overrides of vetoes by the Democratic governor
In 2022, Wiley Nickel began his campaign for a swing Congressional seat created by the State Supreme Court map. He advocated for fairness in taxes and raising corporate rates, for reducing the tax burden on individuals and increasing minimum pay through a $15 per hour minimum wage. He supported efforts to end voter suppression and, echoing his role in the State Senate, advocated support for public education. He won his election by 8,838 votes. If asked for a brief description, he might have called himself a safe and reasonable Democrat. You could describe him as a Democrat who can win in a swing district or in a Republican leaning district.
Even if Wiley Nickel’s district remains similar to its current configuration, we don’t know who he will be facing in November, 2024. There are already two Republicans in the field and it would not be a surprise if there were more. Help Wiley Nickel be prepared for the expected and the unexpected. He will need to be agile and assertive. And he will need resources beyond the resources he brings to the table himself.
Democrats Regaining Control of the House of Representatives
Republicans now control the House of Representatives, but with a very narrow majority. A high priority for all of us should be helping Democrats regain the House. (Keeping Democratic control of the Senate may be a slightly higher priority since a Democratic President can operate, can appoint judges and senior executives with a Democratic Senate even if Republicans have a majority in the House.).
Returning the House of Representatives to Democratic control first requires protecting Democratic incumbents. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has issued a list of vulnerable Democratic incumbents. They do not differentiate among those incumbents. Their “Frontline” candidates, are listed in alphabetical order by state.
My list is different. I use a simple and crude basis for creating a vulnerability order. Incumbents’ vulnerability is ranked based on how narrow their victory was in 2022. Like every measure someone might choose, this is imperfect. Below is the DCCC list of Frontline candidates with a comment on where each candidate is on my list plus occasional additional comments.
Mary Peltola (AK AL) Len’s #35 using the final ranked choice margin
Mike Levin (CA 49) Len’s #25
Yadira Caraveo (CO 08) Len’s #2 (Len’s Political Note #537)
Jahana Hayes (CT 05) Len’s #3 (Len’s Political Note #542)
Nicki Budzinski (IL 13) Not on Len’s List
Eric Sorensen (IL 17) Len’s #12
Frank Mrvan (IN 01) Len’s #18
Sharice Davids (KS 03) Not on Len’s List
Jared Golden (ME 02) Len’s #17 using the final ranked choice margin
Hillary Scholten (MI 03) Not on Len’s List, but she is a favorite of mine.
Dan Kildee (MI 08) Len’s #37
Angie Craig (MN 02) Len’s #27
Chris Pappas (NH 01) Not on Len’s List
Gabriel Vasquez (NM 02) Len’s #1 (Len’s Political Note #536)
Susan Lee (NV 03) Len’s #13
Steven Horsford (NV 04) Len’s #15
Pat Ryan (NY 18) Len’s #5 (Len’s Political Note #485)
Greg Landsman (OH 01) Len’s #26
Marcy Kaptur (OH 09) Not on Len’s List but belongs there. Her Republican opponent in 2022 was a terrible candidate and her margin of victory was much larger than it would have been against a strong opponent.
Emily Sykes (OH 13) Len’s #24
Andrea Salinas (OR 06) Len’s #8 (Len’s Political Note #548)
Susan Wild (PA 07) Len’s #6 (Len’s Political Note #546)
Matt Cartwright (PA 08) Len’s #7 (Len’s Political Note #547)
Chris Deluzio (PA 17) Len’s #34
Abigail Spanberger (VA 07) Len’s #21
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA 03) Len’s #4 She could easily be #1, the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent. She ran against an extreme right wing Republican who upended a popular moderate Republican (Len’s Political Note #543)
Kiim Schreier Len’s #32
Candidates ranked vulnerable by Len who were not included by the DCCC as “Frontline” candidates
Seth Magaziner (RI 02) Len’s #9 Despite his close 2022 win, it is hard to imagine a Democratic incumbent being vulnerable in Rhode Island. I do not ask for early money for him, but will watch to see how the race develops.
Katie Porter (CA 47) Len’s #11 Porter is running for the Senate. With California’s open primary, a Democrat in the run off for this Congressional district is not even a certainty. In 2018, the DCCC recognized that problem and supported a Democrat early. We’ll see if the DCCC does something like that again.
Jim Costa (CA 21) Len’s #14. He counts as vulnerable.
Vicente Gonzalez (TX 34) Len’s #16 The incumbent he defeated had won a special election. The DCCC Chair, who lost his own election in 2022, had decided that special elections were unimportant; the focus had to be on the 2022 general election. Gonzalez moved from TX 15 where he was the incumbent but thought he was vulnerable and defeated the short-term incumbent. Gonzalez is probably less vulnerable than his 2022 margin might suggest.
Dina Titus (NV 01) Len’s #20 All three Democratic incumbents from Nevada really are vulnerable.
Jaren Moskowitz (FL 23) Len’s #22 This appears to be a Democratic district
Dennis Soto (FL 09) Len’s #23 Soto is Puerto Rican, not Cuban. Redistricted, this was his closest race ever, but he does keep on winning.
Jennifer Wexton (VA 10) Len’s #28 She runs scared, which helps her win.
Elissa Slotkin (MI 07) Len’s #29 Slotkin is running for the Senate. The Democratic nominee will need help.
Joe Morelle (NY 25) Len’s #30 His margin of victory was not bad considering redistricting and a bad election for New York Democrats
Kathy Manning (NC 06) Len’s #31 Another candidate who runs scared, which she should do since the shape of NC districts for 2024 is uncertain.
David Trone (MD 06) Len’s #33 He won by a surprisingly robust margin after redistricting made his district less Democratic
Val Hoyle (OR 04) Len’s #36 An education and labor advocate and Congressional freshman whose victory margin was larger than expected.
