Kevin Nicholson is a 40-year-old former Marine running in the Republican primary to challenge Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., for her seat in the upper chamber. But Nicholson’s candidacy has been simultaneously plagued and boosted by one issue: He used to be an outspoken Democrat.
Sometime between 2000 and 2018, the businessman made the dramatic shift from serving as president of the College Democrats of America to running as a conservative Republican candidate for Senate.
Though a recent poll appeared to show him leading state Sen. Leah Vukmir, Nicholson’s campaign continues to face the challenge of providing a convincing timeline of his conversion. For some, his ideological 180 calls into question Nicholson’s commitment to conservative principles. But for others in this purple state, it probably mirrors political transformations of their own.
Details continue to trickle out suggesting it took years for the candidate to fully divorce himself from the Democratic Party — most recently, FEC records revealed he was paid $7,300 in salary and mileage reimbursements by the Minnesota Democratic Party in 2002. Records also show he cast a ballot in the 2008 Democratic primary for president, though Nicholson says he voted “no preference,” after finding himself unable to vote in the Republican primary when he showed up at the polls because of a 25-day party registration requirement.
In a Wednesday interview with the Washington Examiner, Nicholson made no qualms about his journey from Democrat to Republican being a process — one that occurred after he deliberately extracted himself from the realm of politics and joined the Marines. Questions of partisan identity were “just a million miles from my head,” he insists.
Nicholson’s statement that he left the 2000 Democratic convention “absolutely certain” he no longer belonged to the party has been interpreted by some to mean he formally left the party at that moment in time — and understandably so. But, as the candidate himself claims, it only represented the beginning of the end.
“I didn’t say that then,” Nicholson recalled on Wednesday. “I didn’t like the internal workings of the Democratic Party. I didn’t like the way they were approaching the issues. I knew enough to know I was kind of fed up with the whole thing.”
“Had I intellectually thought through the financial piece of it, pro-life issues?” he asked. “No, I hadn’t. I just knew I was in a crowd of people that didn’t seem to match up.”
The nuances of his conversion — a conversion which occurred over the same period in which he served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and earned Master’s degrees from Harvard and Dartmouth — are lost in the heat of a competitive campaign season, Nicholson believes. “I just got away from it all, which was the right thing to do, and to live life, and get out there and do what I did.”
The argument, then, is that his disillusion with the Democratic Party gradually pushed Nicholson away from it — not immediately into the arms of the Republican Party — but rather into an apolitical space where he learned lessons that started the process of changing his worldview. Though by 2004, Nicholson says he voted for George W. Bush.
“I was at that stage of life, of like, ‘I don’t really like what I’m seeing from the Democratic Party; I like the candidates I’m seeing better, certainly at the presidential election for Republicans,'” he explained. “But had I formally decided I’m x, y? No, I wasn’t thinking about it, because I was training to go to Iraq and Afghanistan. It was just a million miles from my head.”
He points to his record of financial contributions, ostensible support for Sen. John McCain, and public writings as proof his conservatism had crystallized around 2008, between his deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2014, Nicholson had openly written in the Weekly Standard about his conversion, saying, “In the ensuing years after my time leading the College Dems, I began a journey that took me back home to the heartland, off to a cattle ranch in the mountains of Wyoming, across the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and through the halls of two Ivy League schools. Along the way, I got married, had three children, kept my drive, dropped my illusions, and came to admit, then embrace, the fact that I am a conservative.” (On his writings, Nicholson quipped, “The reason you’re not hearing about any of those yet, and you will in the general, is because they’re very, very conservative.”)
In a state like Wisconsin, which seems to have undergone a similar transformation from blue to red, could Nicholson’s journey be an asset?
“This is not unusual,” the candidate said on Wednesday. “If you were to go to northern Wisconsin right now and talk to people who voted for Trump, probably a lot of them voted for Obama, probably a lot of them voted for Walker.”
Nicholson is in some ways uniquely equipped to connect with voters historically inclined towards Democrats, but disillusioned with the party’s embrace of identity politics.
“I saw the Democratic Party from the inside, and saw the way that the party racially and ethnically balkanizes our country and encourages people to turn on each other and to look at each other as competing interests and not as fellow Americans,” he told the Washington Examiner back in December.
Nicholson’s opponent draws a contrast between the two of them on this very matter of partisan loyalty. Leah Vukmir is a lifelong Republican who has served in the Wisconsin legislature since 2002, endearing her to much of the state GOP. She fought alongside Gov. Scott Walker, who remains popular among Wisconsin Republicans, during the historic protests of 2011 and the recall election of 2012. “My track record is there, and people don’t have to question it because I’ve actually accomplished things and have been a part of an amazing team of individuals in Wisconsin who have followed through on the promises of a conservative agenda, and we’ve actually made a difference for our state,” she told the Washington Examiner last month.
In that sense, the two have this in common: strengths that could also double as weaknesses. And Nicholson has sought to cast Vukmir’s time in Madison as a liability. “She’s been part of the political system for a long time, and she’s vying to go back into the political system for a long time longer,” he said on Wednesday. Nicholson isn’t personally worried about a potential enthusiasm gap hurting Republicans in November, but did argue voters “are not going to show up to the polls for a boiler plate insider who’s saying, ‘Look, here’s my vote record.’ That doesn’t disparage that vote record; it simply says people want somebody outside the system to go to Washington.”
Vukmir laughs off claims she’s a member of the political establishment. “The word establishment doesn’t have the same meaning in Wisconsin that it does in Washington. Here, the establishment is activists,” she argued last month.
In recent days, the two candidates have quibbled over their debate schedule — or lack thereof. On Wednesday, Nicholson said he was hopeful the two campaigns would get something on the books soon. “There’s no reason not to debate, nobody should be worried about it, and just do it,” he remarked.
Nicholson, for his part, doesn’t seemed concerned by the prospect of facing more attacks about his conversion, though he’s ultimately dismissive of their impact.
“I think it’s probably frustrating for people that the one bit of quote-on-quote ‘oppo research’ is what I lead my speeches with,” he said.
