American Idol’ made Clay Aiken a star. But he knows it won’t make him a congressman.

— Clay Aiken was warned not to go into the pig barn.

“You won’t be able to get the stench off of you,” advised the farmer as the former “American Idol” runner-up squelched through the mud.

But Aiken, now a Democratic congressional candidate, was resolute. Earlier this year, he made the decision to trade whatever glamour remained from his singing days for the town halls and farm tours of the campaign trail.

Nearing the barn, Aiken gently kicks dirt off his laceless wingtips. “Oh, I’m smelling it now,” he says.

In 2003, more than 38 million people tuned in for the “Idol” finale, and 12 million of them voted for Aiken. That feels like a long time ago. Gone are the sold-out stadiums, performances at the World Series and a single atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Gone even are the following days of “Celebrity Apprentice” or guest spots as some version of himself on “Scrubs,” “30 Rock” and “Law and Order: SVU” (which he says he did two years ago to stay on his Screen Actors Guild health insurance).

After coming in second on two reality shows, Aiken, now 35, likes to say the third time’s the charm. But this contest may be the most difficult of the three. The 2nd District of North Carolina is an amorphous, gerrymandered blob of mostly Republican voters west of Raleigh that gave just 41 percent of the vote to President Obama in 2012. By all accounts, Aiken’s got an uphill climb.

The challenge is to figure out the best way to harness his famous name while also finding a way to be taken seriously as a congressional candidate. One of the great ironies in the life of Clay Aiken is that when he first auditioned for “American Idol,” the judges weren’t sure about sending him through because the beanpole with Coke-bottle glasses didn’t look like a pop star. And now that he’s running for Congress, he has to deal with the fact that for many people, a pop star is all they’ll ever see.

I chose a life in the public; he did not,” the candidate says. And whether it comes naturally or not, his choice to lead a public life has left Aiken well-prepared for retail politics.

During a steamy mid-September weekend two months before the election, Aiken stopped at a VFW, where he impressed volunteers at a car show with his knowledge of Veterans Affairs programs and which community colleges give credit for military involvement. He talked about the need to secure our borders with a woman at a street festival and name-checked the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and Republican Sen. Richard Burr and former senator ­Jesse Helms in a local television interview (it’s important for Aiken to make clear that he is a moderate Democrat).

It’s not necessarily that Aiken has an encyclopedic knowledge of the issues — though the Cook Political Report, a hard-to-
impress bunch, said he was ­“better-versed and more in-depth than plenty of state legislators we have met” — it’s that he’s an incredibly good listener.

“Oprah said something to me years ago, one of the first times I met her,” Aiken says, aware that stories like these don’t necessarily help his cause as just a regular Joe. “She said being a good talk show host isn’t about being a good talker, it’s about being good at listening. It’s a misnomer. I think a lot of politicians think being a good one is knowing the right thing to say. I think it’s knowing when to shut the hell up.”