Leftwing political commentator Cenk Uygur has joined a growing list of Democratic and liberal challengers to President Biden’s reelection run, and he’s also bucking the Constitution’s requirement that the president be a natural-born U.S. citizen.
Mr. Uygur was born in Turkey and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He created The Young Turks, a leftwing news commentary show on YouTube, and co-founded the Justice Democrats political action committee that works to elect far-left candidates to Congress.
He has vowed to take his challenge to the Constitution’s presidential requirement to the Supreme Court — if his longshot run for the Democratic presidential nomination gets that far.
The way Mr. Uygur sees it, he doesn’t have a choice but to run.
“Joe Biden is going to lose and I need everyone to understand he is going to lose and we can’t have it. Trump is an actual fascist,” Mr. Uygur told The Washington Times. “Democracy is on the line.”
Mr. Uygur’s goal is to shake up the race because top Democratic politicians such as Kentucky Gov. Andrew Beshear and Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker have not challenged Mr. Biden’s candidacy. He said his party must find a viable alternative to Mr. Biden.
“This is not a guy who is going to win and I will do anything and everything to make sure the Democratic Party and the country at large wakes up,” Mr. Uygur said. “If you think democracy is on the line, you would be in this race. You wouldn’t just let Biden lose.”
Unseating an incumbent president in a primary race is an uphill battle, but Mr. Uygur’s trek is made even more challenging since he was not born in the United States.
Article II of the Constitution, in part, reads: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
The constitution does not define the term “natural born citizen” and there’s no evidence of discussion around that from the Federal Convention of 1787.
There’s also no Supreme Court precedent on the qualifications to serve as president.
Mr. Uygur contends that the Constitution was amended by both the 5th and 14th Amendments, giving due process to all citizens. He says this means those not born here are still guaranteed to have equal rights, and that includes the chance to serve as president.
He said it’s a “mythology” taught in grade school that only people born in the U.S. can serve as president. He points to the 1964 case Schneider v. Rusk, where the high court grappled with a naturalized citizen being stripped of her citizenship for returning to her home country for a few years. The court ruled that under the Constitution, naturalized citizens had to be treated the same as those born in America who wouldn’t be subject to having their citizenship stripped if they moved abroad for a while.
Mr. Uygur said this aspect of his campaign touches a “raw nerve” with the more than 20 million naturalized citizens living in the U.S., saying they are the “silent majority” and that it’s a civil rights issue.
Mr. Uygur believes he’ll ultimately win on the issue and plans to take his legal fight to the highest court. “We are going to end this mythology,” he said.
Legal scholars, though, said a win for Mr. Uygur — at least in the courts — is unlikely.
“This is a pretty open-and-shut case. The Constitution requires that you be a natural-born citizen. That does not envision naturalization as a way of becoming a citizen. It says natural born, so I believe this candidate will not be eligible to run for president and is not,” said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Michael W. McConnell, a law professor at Stanford University and former federal circuit court judge, said Mr. Uygur’s challenge “has approximately zero chance of success.”
Mr. Uygur launched his campaign against a leader of the Democratic Party whose favorability rating is fading. Mr. Biden has a 40% approval rate, down from around 55% when he entered office in 2021.
He joins a field of off-beat liberals seeking to replace Mr. Biden including self-help guru Marianne Williamson, who is again seeking the Democratic nomination after she caught the attention of some progressive voters with her 2020 run.
Also in the mix are anti-vaccine crusader Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who quit his Democratic run to vie as an independent presidential candidate, and leftwing activist Cornel West, who is running as an independent.
Mr. Uygur was born in Turkey and immigrated to the U.S. when he was 8 years old. He graduated from the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 2020, he made an unsuccessful run for Congress in California. In previous presidential elections, he supported Sen. Bernard Sanders, a Democratic socialist from Vermont.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.