Former New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof announced on Wednesday that he is running for governor of Oregon as a Democrat.

“I’ve decided I am going to run for governor of Oregon,” he told the local NBC News affiliate in Portland, KGW8, in an exclusive interview.

“It was a wonderful perch when your friends and people you deeply care about are suffering and you’re attending funeral after funeral then that perch and writing columns that are read in the White House doesn’t mean as much as knowing that you’re going to be going to another funeral,” said Kristof, speaking of his New York Times career, which he left earlier this month after 37 years that included being a reporter, editor and columnist.

Kristof, along with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, wrote a book published in 2020 about issues surrounding everyday Americans such as drug addiction and homelessness. In the book, the two write that nearly a quarter of the kids of Kristof’s school bus when he was a child “have died from drugs, alcohol or suicide,” according to KGW8 reporter Laural Porter, who interviewed the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.

In a video posted on his Twitter account, announcing his run, Kristof mentioned the tragedy of his fellow school bus riders.

A quarter of the kids on my old No. 6 school bus in rural Oregon are dead from drugs, alcohol, suicide, and there are No. 6 buses all over the state and country. So I’ve made the leap. I’m running for governor and here’s why. More at https://t.co/MkRcl5s9fY. Please share! Thanks! pic.twitter.com/R4iEYHDYZM

— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) October 27, 2021

Kristof has no prior political experience. The current governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, a Democrat, is limited to two consecutive terms and is therefore ineligible from running for re-election in 2022.

Watch above, via KGW8 and Twitter.

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