Alexander Nicholi for Congress

J.D. and I might both be from the same neck of the woods or thereabouts, but I’m not writing any Elegy anytime soon. Quite the opposite:

A homestead visit with my cousin Tony Eugene Whitlow. Tony spent a cumulative 24 years in the West Virginia legislature and was once good friends with former Senator Joe Manchin.

Having been on this Earth for about 10,000 days gave me the maturity to recognise the moral value in Tony’s service to the people when I reconnected with him in the spring of ‘25. Those on our side of the family have been lifelong Democrats, and it was there and then that I began to understand why.

More importantly, it helped me realize how so many of the problems I faced down as a young man had answers that could only come from an older kind of Democratic heart. This is what I intend to bring to the people of District 13.

Sadly, the Democratic party of latter days has been a confused, anxious, muddled and unpopular mess.

Lori Lightfoot became the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose re-election.

While it may not be clear what the right path is to some Democratic party functionaries, it sure is clear to me.

No more lawlessness.

North Carolinians value a strong sense of private property along with prompt and professional enforcement of those rights. No Democrat should seek to undermine those rights.

The ethos of “protect and serve” shouldn’t be a suggestion, either. Instead of ending qualified immunity and putting police in harm’s way, we should instead give them a positive mandate to public duty, ending selective and arbitrary enforcement of the law.

Finally, it’s long since past time we implement dignified border controls. Masked ICE agents spiriting away law-abiding citizens is just as insane as Biden’s de facto open border policy. Neither of these are acceptable to the American people.

No more corruption.

Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine massively eroded public trust in Democratic governance. The big bet for the GOP and the tech mafia is simple: they plan on being more brazen about their share of corruption, hiding it in audacity while daring you to do anything about it. We can’t tolerate that.

Whether it’s $500 billion datacenters for chatbot SPAM, massive structural bailouts for Silly-Con Valley funny money banks, or just the classic double standard of “socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor”, it all needs to end today. We’re paying for it with our lives.

No more scab labor.

That this ever became a point of the Right is a testament to how thoroughly We the People have been gaslit by billionaire oligarchs who are trying to rob us. Labor is the backbone of Democratic governance and I will always stand up for and defend the livelihoods of working Americans wherever and however they may be threatened.

To the chagrin of the tech mafia, the H1B program will end. Criminal penalties for employers of illegal workers must be imposed. And above all, we will stop tolerating the gaslighting that the problem of immigration is about race.

For the biggest stakeholders, immigration is always and only about the money for them. Never forget that.

Stable and harmonious coexistence in America doesn’t result from people’s genetics. It results from equal opportunity before the law. No more cheat codes for plutocrats, and no more disinforming the public about what they’re really after here.

No more fiscal looting.

The United States government has been binging itself on unprecedented amounts of sovereign debt, spending us into a nightmare that we may never be able to pay our way out of.

Far and away the biggest benefactors of this are billionaire-run government contractors, now including CIA darlings such as Palantir.

The lobbyists engineering this spending spree show no signs of stopping, and the only things your GOP seem to be concerned about is making sure that they’re the ones on the receiving end of those government checks.

Deficit spending and cuts to Medicare and Medicaid helped fund the “Stargate” datacenter for the profit of companies like Oracle and OpenAI.

Meanwhile, income inequality in America has absolutely soared, and the stock market is increasingly decoupled from the real economy as laborers—both blue collar and white collar—languish in dire straits, unable to afford any mobility or surprise expense.

What are you going to do when you have no money to do it with?

Regardless of what curveballs may come my way, or what difficulties I may face as a legislator in voting morally on the bills that shape your lives, at the absolute bare minimum I promise you this:

I will never play along with the Congressional game of deficit spending.

Let me be precise.

Upon election, I will create and furnish a website that contains a breakdown of how I voted and why regarding my votes on every single bill or resolution that comes to my desk, if and when it affects any of three things:

Furthermore, I also pledge to decompose every so-called “omnibus bill”, itemizing it the same as described above with singular bills. For each item, I will state how I would have voted on it as a standalone bill along with how much weight it carries in my ultimate vote relative to the other items on the list.

I will not be parried around by the groupthink of lawmakers and roped into their machinations of rationalizing the legalized robbery of the American people.

I will be both morally principled and fiercely pragmatic in how I vote for you. It’s the least that you should expect out of your Congressman.

Protect the public wealth we paid for in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

It is unconscionable that lawmakers ever deliberate cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security for the simple reason that it is one large tax that every American sees on their paystubs without fail for the entirety of their working lives.

These things are paid for! So leave them alone! This is one issue that is painfully simple!

Uphold the Constitution in its entirety.

Foreign radicals both left and right often balk at American constitutionalism, seeing it not as the sacred tradition we treat it as, but more like a negotiable contract that can be changed to the whims of its custodians. This sort of approach to the law is intolerable.

In Congress I will defend and uphold the Constitution, the whole Constitution, and nothing but the Constitution, so help me God. This I promise you.

Protect the rights and dignities of the most vulnerable among us.

This is another hallowed American tradition of liberalism that traces its roots back to the philosophy and policies of the Founding Fathers. Inclusivity is what we value and strive to achieve.

Efforts like the Equal Rights Amendment, to me, are plain common sense. At the end of the day, we do these things not to privilege already well-fed leisurely classes of people, but rather the poor Americans among us who may not be able to afford the standing needed to fully exercise their human and civil rights.

It’s simply morally pragmatic to bolster the means of those without so that they, too, can square up fairly with their actions and the actions of others before the law.

Americans always come first in foreign and public policy.

Though still amorphous, divided and multi-faceted, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a spectre undermining American sovereignty both inside and out of this country.

Everyone from North Korean hackers to economic migrants and their cartel coyotes—and from billionaire stakeholders to phoney political hacks and their Capitoline media fixers—all stand together, however uneasy, when it comes to one thing: undermining the sovereignty of the American people for personal gain.

The more that time goes on, the more that all sincere issues of politics continue to collapse into this one overwhelming issue that its instigators are hoping we don’t wake up to realize: they want to put themselves first in our names. I will adamantly oppose this regardless of whatever form it takes to present itself in Congress.

The sacrifices of our forefathers in putting an end to genocidal fascist regimes around the world—and the resultant economic boom and treasure trove of American benevolence and magnanimity we freely opened up to the battered nations of the world—was not made so that we could be stabbed in the back by the rejects and losers of those countries 80-odd years later.

People like Elon Musk should never have come here, and we need to stop kidding ourselves that immigration is a humanitarian solution to suffering. This isn’t working and we’re losing untold sums of money going along with it.

We have to stand up for ourselves as Americans—and when I say Americans I unapologetically mean all of us—and boldly defy the pathological lying, gaslighting, undermining and manipulation being deployed against us by long-toothed liars pretending to be our friends. All that most of these people hope to do is profit from our ignorance while they mock us for it behind our backs. This has to stop.