High Country Times

Republicans have been known to wage "war against African Americans," while Democrats have been fighting for them since 1964, columnist Gene Nichol said, but Sonja Nichols is running to join North Carolina's Senate as a Black Republican. 

"I have a different perspective, which is why I’m a Black woman running to join the Republican majority in the North Carolina Senate," Nichols wrote in the News & Observer column. "I don’t need gatekeepers like Nichol telling me what Republicans stand for. The truth is the Republican-led legislature has opened more opportunities for the Black community in the last 10 years than Democrats did in the previous 40 years."

Over the years, Republicans have passed legislation that would help North Carolina's Black population such as the NC Promise program, she wrote. This program gives $500 tuition at two colleges that serve a large population of Black students. Republicans created this program, not the Democrats who called the party "racist."

In the 1990s, Democrats wrote laws that extend the minimum sentence for drug-related sentences. Republicans saw that these laws were undone, which opened "up new opportunities for people of color caught up in the justice system at a young age," Nichols wrote in the op-ed. 

"For decades, Democrats have told the Black community that Republicans want to keep them down," she wrote in the News & Observer. "I’m a Black Republican woman, and I’m running to join the group that embraces concrete progress over failed promises."

Nichols is running for the District 37 Senate seat.