Two UNC-Chapel Hill Trustees Are Running for Statewide Office from Their Board Seats

This story originally published online at NC Newsline.

Dave Boliek was the first member of the UNC-Chapel Hill trustees to announce he was running for statewide office from his board seat, seeking to become State Auditor. But as candidate filing wrapped up last Friday, he wasn’t alone.

Fellow board member Brad Briner filed to join the GOP primary race for State Treasurer Friday.

Briner, who joined the trustees board only last month, is co-chief investment officer at New York-based investment firm Willett Advisors. He also sits on the board of trustees of prep school Phillips Exeter Academy (of which he is a graduate), the board of directors of the Boston Omaha Corporation and the state debt affordability advisory committee.

UNC System policy doesn’t prevent sitting trustees from running for political office while serving as political appointees on trustee boards, but should they win they would have to resign their seats to take office.

Critics, including prominent faculty members at UNC-Chapel Hill, have said board members running for office from governing boards further blurs the lines between state universities and politics, calling into question whether their decisions as trustees are in the best interest of their universities or their own political aspirations.

“If someone is actively seeking the nomination of a political party and they are a member of our board of trustees, this is yet another step in politics infecting the decision making of the board of trustees,” said Mimi Chapman, former chair of the faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill and a cofounder of the nonprofit Coalition for Carolina, when Newsline first reported Boliek’s candidacy in September.

“Almost by definition they are trying to please, I guess in particular, primary voters,” Chapman said. “They’re being asked to please the most fervent, extreme parts of their party.”

Boliek has never run for office and switched his voter registration from Democratic to Republican just a few months before deciding to run for auditor. Therefore, Chapman said, the only place for him to establish his conservative political bona fides is in his role as a trustee.

“It calls into question all of his choices,” Chapman said. “What were they in the service of? Were they in the service of this run he’s making? Were they in the service of the university — the students, the staff, the faculty of this university? It muddies the waters even more than they already were.”

Jay Smith, professor of History at UNC-Chapel Hill and president of the state chapter of the American Association of University Professors, agreed.

“It further erodes—or threatens to further erode—any confidence that the public had that these boards are independent stewards of the institutions they’re supposed to be watching over,” Smith told Newsline. “If there’s a revolving door between political office and seats on the board, that just can’t be a good thing.”

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