One of the most blatant examples of the University of North Carolina’s too-cozy relationship with the Democratic Party is the Center for Poverty, Work, and Opportunity at the law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was created to help John Edwards launch his 2008 presidential campaign on his “Two America’s” class warfare theme.

When Edwards’s presidential campaign imploded in 2008, it was believed the Center would disappear once the money raised by Edwards ran out. Yet, shortly after Edwards left public life, a second attention-loving failed Democrat politician took over the Center—Gene Nichol.

The Poverty Center was his soft landing after getting bounced as president of William and Mary. Nichol used his position as much like a political platform as had Edwards, firing political missives in the local press to attack everybody to the right of Bernie Sanders.

Last year, the state legislature ordered the UNC Board of Governors to explore closing some centers, and the Poverty Center was one of three shut down—properly so, since it was not sufficiently academic. But no sooner was it closed than Nichol created a “Poverty Fund” that operates exactly like the Poverty Center did—as an “academic” unit within the law school. This may very well be illegal; at the least it is an improper nose-thumbing by Nichol toward those who rained on his poverty parade. In this article, I describe how the new Poverty Fund is just like the old Poverty Center: all about the politics, not the poverty.