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Thursday, January 24, 2008 10:03 AM Jim Neal battles for name recognition By Matt Shaw | Times Staff Writer Jim Neal passed through Wilson Wednesday on a route that, he hopes, will lead to the U.S. Senate. Neal, a Democrat seeking U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole's seat, attended a fund-raising event Wednesday night hosted by Allen Thomas Jr., Page and Eliot Smith, and Susan and Tom Hackney. Before that, he stopped by the Daily Times' offices. Kay Hagan, a five-term state senator from Greensboro, has also declared her candidacy for Dole's seat and looms as perhaps Neal's biggest competition in the May 6 Democratic primary. Filing doesn't begin until next month. During his talk at the Daily Times, Neal called himself "a different type of animal" from Hagan. "I am someone who is going to go to Washington and do what I'm going to say that I'll do," he said. "I am a candidate from the real world, not the political one." Neal, 51, is a Chapel Hill businessman making his first run for public office, but he has been involved with politics as a Democratic Party fund-raiser. He assisted the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004. He declared his candidacy last October and is in the midst of a 17-campus tour. After leaving Wilson, Neal was heading to East Carolina University for an appearance Thursday night. "In the senatorial race, nobody is out in the state like I am," Neal said. He includes Dole in that statement, dismissing her as "a virtual senator" who has spent little time in the state since her 2002 election. He said that polls show Dole with "extremely low approval numbers" among N.C. voters, which he hopes means that she is potentially vulnerable to whoever the Democratic candidate is. Dole will try to turn the Senate race into an election about immigration, he said. "She wants to make illegal immigrants the bogey-men of 2008." Dole opposed immigration legislation proposed by President Bush that would have at least started a dialogue, Neal said. Neal said he has talked to farmers across the state who are hurting financially because of the constraints put on the use of migrant workers. In some cases, farmers are no longer allowed to employ people they've used for decades, he said. Neal favors an immigration bill that would secure the nation's borders, including its seaports, but that would include a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are law-abiding and tax-paying, he said. If Neal were to win the nomination, he would become the first openly gay nominee to run for a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina. Neal admitted that he is gay last fall during a moderated chat on the liberal blog BlueNC. "No secret and no big deal to me -- I wouldn't be running if I didn't think otherwise," he wrote. "I'm not running to make some social statement." Neal was born in Greensboro in 1956. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1978 and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Chicago. He has worked as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, an investment banker at Salomon Brothers, a senior investment banker with E.F Hutton and Bear Stearns, and chief executive officer of RxMarketplace.com. He now operates The Agema Group, a financial advisory firm based in Chapel Hill. Neal lives in Chapel Hill with the younger of his two sons, Winston. The older, James, is working in New York City. For more information, go to www.jimnealforsenate.com. mshaw@wilsontimes.com | 265-7878 |
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