Election Board hearings: Mike Easley is accused of pilfering campaign funds.
Former Gov. Mike Easley, at the outset of hearings into possible violations of the state’s campaign finance laws, stands accused — by a friend — of being a petty grifter.
The accusation is that Easley took $11,000 in campaign funds to pay for repairs to the house he owned on East Lake Drive in Raleigh, a house he rented out during the eight years he occupied the Governor’s Mansion. He hid the transactions by misreporting what they were for, the friend testified.
The repairs were contracted and paid for by McQueen Campbell, Easley’s friend and someone who, according to his testimony, frequently piloted the governor free of charge in airplanes owned by one of Campbell’s companies. The costs, for two different sets of repairs, came to $4,777.50 and $6,300, respectively. They were billed to the Easley campaign not as repairs—since that would’ve been an illegal, personal expense an embarrassing if technically legal expense—but rather as “various flights,” ostensibly to campaign-related events, Campbell testified.
[Update, Day 2: Paying personal expenses from campaign accounts was perfectly legal under state law at the time, according to Dave Horne, who testified this morning, even for something like home repairs. Horne, a lawyer, served as treasurer for Easley's 2000 and 2004 gubernatorial campagins. The only rule at the time, he said, was that such expenses needed to be reported accurately, which if Campbell is to be believed, Easley failed to do. Since the 2004 campaign, state election laws have been tightened. Such things as meals, clothes and cars can still be paid for with campaign funds, but only if the expenditure can be linked to winning or holding a public office; repairs to a rental house would presumably not qualify.]
A campaign aide who questioned the second bill testified that Easley called her and directed her to pay it, even though it was vague and unsupported by any documentation about the flights. In a memo she wrote to her boss at the time, she quoted Easley as telling her he “knows what it says” and wanted it paid anyway.
The aide, Rebecca McGhee, worked for Raleigh lawyer Dave Horne, an Easley confidante who was serving at the time as treasurer of Easley’s 2004 re-election campaign.
She and Campbell testified under subpoena Monday, the first day of hearings by the State Board of Elections into allegations that the Easley campaign and the North Carolina Democratic Party may have committed criminal violations in their handling of contributions from Easley’s supporters. The hearings are expected to continue through the week. Continue reading »
