Bo's time? NC Republican political newcomer draws fire in bid for toss-up congressional seat

The wide receiver — who had offers from several big NCAA Division I football programs — chose N.C. State, where he played a season before transferring to Yale.

The move was intended to further his political goals while also enabling him to continue playing ball. But a shoulder separation and broken collarbone forced him to give up the game he loved and devote his energy to his other ambition.

Today, Hines is the Republican candidate in North Carolina’s most competitive congressional race, where he again finds himself dodging opponents intent on taking him down.

“This is a lot more vicious than football,” said Hines, a 27-year-old political newcomer. “Politics is a full-contact sport.”

“This is someone who is, frankly, a clear and present danger to the United States of America,” Nickel said of Hines.

In response, Hines’ campaign called Nickel “the most dangerous man in the race,” citing cases in which Nickel’s law firm defended violent criminals.

Triangle congressional candidate Bo Hines moves to district a month out from election

While Hines insists his message hasn’t changed, he says he has become more thoughtful in recent months so as to appeal to a larger group of voters.

“When you're in a crowded primary field, you might have to scream a little bit louder in order to be heard, but the reality is that our positions haven't changed,” Hines said. “I think we're highlighting certain things more now because we're trying to talk to a larger electorate that's going to end up making a decision on who governs them.”

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Political onlookers see Hines potentially taking the country in a far-right direction.

“There are plenty of voters going to the polls, wondering: ‘Is this person going to be a rubber stamp for Trump?” said Asher Hildebrand, a professor of public policy at Duke University and former Democratic operative. “ ‘Is this person going to try to subvert American democracy? Is this person going to trample on my rights in the name of advancing an extreme ideological agenda?’ And those are very valid and pertinent questions to be asking about Bo Hines.”

Hines thinks abortion should be unlawful except in cases where a mother’s life is at risk. He wants victims of rape and incest to be allowed to get an abortion on a case-by-case basis through a community-level review process outside the jurisdiction of the federal government.

He opposes additional restrictions on gun owners, but wants to ensure firearms are stored properly and kept away from children. The day after police said a 15-year-old killed five people last week in Raleigh’s Hedingham neighborhood, Hines cited safe storage laws and increased spending on mental health as possible solutions.

“I'm a huge proponent of the Second Amendment,” Hines said. “People have a right to defend themselves and their families, but there's no reason that a child should have access to a firearm unattended by an adult.”

Hines says the first bill he’d introduce in Congress would be a 10-year moratorium on immigration, with exceptions for asylum seekers as well as H1A, H2A and H2B workers that are vital to North Carolina’s agricultural industry. As he works to shut down the border between the United States and Mexico, he wants to establish what he considers a more diverse immigration system with fewer migrants from Central America and more from African and European countries.

Hines denies the results of the 2020 presidential election, saying he doesn’t believe it’s possible that Biden got more than 81 million votes. Still, he insists he’ll accept the result of his congressional race. Nickel argues Hines would work to get Trump unduly elected in 2024.

The views Hines holds stem in large part from his conservative upbringing, including his work at his father’s hard goods licensing company, Wild Sports. Hines recalls watching presidential and senatorial debates as a child, but he didn’t solidify his political views until college.

“He wanted to be in politics for whatever reason that he wanted to,” Adams said. “To this day, I still don’t know why, but I’m really glad he’s doing it and he’s doing it so young.”

Unlucky breaks on the gridiron gave Hines a head start. He considers a pair of career-ending football injuries his biggest life hardship.

“You're not only in physical pain, but you're having to deal with the emotional hardship of losing something that you thought you'd be involved in for a lot longer,” Hines said.

As a candidate, Hines gets no shortage of unsolicited political advice from his family, particularly his second wife, Mary Charles.

Hines, who is divorced from his first wife, married Mary Charles last summer. He first got married at 21, separated from his wife within 10 months and filed for divorce in 2019. Hines said he came away from the divorce as a better listener and with greater clarity on the family he envisioned having.

“We don't want to see divorce,” Hines said. “We want strong family units in our country. I think in order to do that you have to take the time to get to know someone, especially on a religious level and even a political level, understanding what their ideologies are, who they are as people and how you envision raising your children.”

The first-time candidate doesn’t have any history in office, leaving voters guessing how he’d govern if elected.

In the meantime, Hines is trying to draw parallels between his life experiences and economic issues voters are confronting. But doing so while not coming across as out of touch or elitist has proved a difficult tightrope to walk.

In wide-ranging interviews at a local brewery and at a home he and his wife are renting in Fuquay-Varina, Hines sought to present himself as relatable while dodging questions about who footed the bill for his degrees from elite schools, Yale and the Wake Forest University School of Law.

Hines has said he’s felt the impact of rising costs, citing more expensive bills he sees on a credit card when his wife shops for groceries at Trader Joe’s. “Just look at the cost of eggs,” he said. “They’re up 30-something percent.”

“In my household, my wife and I can’t afford to give up one month’s salary,” Hines said. “We have bills to pay, we have rent to pay. This is something that’s hurting people every single day and their No. 1 priority is the economy.”

But Hines doesn’t have a job outside the campaign trail. He is instead being financially supported through a trust fund set up by his parents. While he pays the rent, his wife covers the utilities.

“The main source of funding is my fundraising calls that I make every day,” Hines said, adding that he personally makes about 400 phone calls soliciting campaign donations on a given day. “But on top of that, the trust fund that we pull from, that’s still a personal investment for us.

“It’s not atypical for families, and especially businesses, to pay their children via trust. We're using our own money and investing in our race because we care about this community and we care about getting this country back in the right direction.”

If elected, Hines would join the House Freedom Caucus, a coalition that includes many of the chamber’s most ideologically extreme conservatives. He has also vowed to make President Joe Biden a “lame duck president in 2022” by stifling his legislative agenda.

“One thing that frustrates me about Congress is that a lot of times we look at the word compromise as being a good thing,” he told the crowd. “I want to make one point here today: compromise does not always equate to progress. We’re at the point where we’re compromising ourself out of our country. We’re losing who we are.”

After an internship on Capitol Hill and working on the unsuccessful 2020 gubernatorial campaign of Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, Hines decided to attempt a run of his own.

Unlike state legislative candidates, North Carolina law allows congressional candidates to run in a district outside their place of residence.

Nickel has criticized Hines over his limited time in the district. Hines in turn has accurately noted Nickel can’t vote for himself this year because he lives in a Cary home a few miles north of 13th district. Nickel, who currently represents parts of the newly drawn congressional district as a state senator, has lived in the area for over a decade.

“Bo Hines has absolutely no leg to stand on,” Nickel said. “He's from the other side of the state. He moved here a few weeks before the primary.”

In interviews with WRAL, Hines said he spoke with voters on the campaign trail about his grandfather’s Indiana farm well before the ad aired.

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“Obviously, I know what a banana republic is,” Hines said. “I do have a political science degree from Yale.”

In expressing his policy views and life experiences, Hines has not always been clear.

He has suggested a desire for blanket prohibitions on abortion and immigration access, but has since clarified exceptions he’d have on both issues.

During a Feb. 17 interview with WRAL, Hines said he “went to law school.” On March 21, he told the TV station, "I finished law school.” After WRAL obtained records showing he graduated from the Wake Forest University School of Law after March, Hines clarified the timetable.

“I got my degree in May,” Hines said last week.

Wake Forest’s registrar’s office confirmed Hines attended through the spring term this year and graduated on May 16.

The seat Hines and Nickel are seeking includes parts of Wake, Wayne and Harnett counties and all of Johnston County. The area stretches from the outskirts of downtown Raleigh to the suburbs of Apex, Holly Springs and Fuquay-Varina to the further-out towns of Clayton, Goldsboro and Smithfield.

“The 13th district is a fascinating microcosm of the direction of the parties as a whole nationally,” said Hildebrand, the Duke professor.

In the reddest parts of the district along Highway 401 are scores of Hines campaign signs, but few voters have strong feelings about either candidate. Travels throughout the district showed voters frustrated with the direction of the country and the economy — a political environment that would seem to favor Republicans.

Despite these priorities, many GOP voters felt frustrated with their party becoming entrenched in unrelated culture war issues. For them, Trump’s support for Hines at rallies this year in Selma and Wilmington carry little importance.

Outside of a laundromat and a nearby grocery store in Fuquay-Varina, voters said they want to know more about how candidates will bring down food and gas costs and make home ownership more attainable.

Hines is hoping his time at his father’s company will give voters confidence in his qualifications to address inflation.

“Healthy competition drives up the quality of the product and lowers the cost of the good,” Hines said. “These are things that the government should be working to do.”

For Wendy Kennedy, a Four Oaks resident, rising housing prices have made ownership out of reach. She’s also feeling the pain at the grocery store. The $75 she spent on three bags of groceries in a given week last year has since doubled.

A strong showing in Johnston County is essential to Hines’ pathway to victory. Cracks in the armor in the GOP county have emerged as the population steadily grows more diverse politically. In 2020, Trump won the area by 24 percentage points, a drop from the 30-point victory he had over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Kennedy is considering switching her affiliation from Republican to unaffiliated. She’s unsure who she’ll support for Congress this year or whether she’ll even vote. Kennedy wants less talk from politicians and more tangible results.

“I don’t know what I’ll do,” Kennedy said. “If voting was tomorrow, I don’t even know that I’d go. But if I don’t go, I don’t have a seat and feel like I don’t have a right to complain if I don’t vote. I’m very confused.”