Clay Aiken, former “American Idol” star, said he is running for Congress a second time because North Carolina representatives “don’t represent me.”
“Our state, which has always been this progressive state, is now sort of synonymous with big names like Madison Cawthorn and Mark Meadows, and it just really upsets me that our state has become represented by these people who don’t represent me,” Aiken said on “The View” on Wednesday.
Aiken announced that he would run as a Democrat for the open seat in North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District on Monday.
Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), who represents much of the area that’s part of the newly redrawn district, said last year that he would not seek reelection in 2022.
Aiken’s run comes eight years after he lost his bid for the 2nd Congressional District in North Carolina in 2014.
When faced with questions about his lack of political experience, Aiken said on “The View” that “the people who are in Congress have lots of political experience and we see what the hell is happening there.”
In the video announcing his campaign, he said he would change North Carolina’s “backwards ass policies.”
“For decades, North Carolina was actually the progressive beacon in the South,” Aiken said. “But then things changed, and the progressives lost power, and we started getting backwards ass policies, like the voter suppression bills and the bigoted bathroom bill.”