He filmed the video in a small North Carolina home where he said he and his mother slept for months on a mattress in a friend’s living room when he was young.

He noted his work teaching children with autism and his international travels with aid organization UNICEF, bookends to his runner-up finish in 2003 on the “American Idol” television talent show that thrust him into the national spotlight.

“If you only know the part of my story that begins with a golden ticket, something that still seems unbelievable to me even to this day, you might wonder what would qualify me to run,” Aiken said.