Early this year, the Wake County district attorney quietly ended a five-year campaign finance investigation involving a Sons of Confederate Veterans scheme to gain legislative influence over removal of Confederate monuments.

While the State Board of Elections found violations of multiple campaign finance laws, including one that carries a felony charge, two treasurers of an SCV-affiliated political action committee got off with misdemeanor charges and less than $600 in fines and court fees.

Campaign finance watchdog Bob Hall, who filed the original complaint in January 2020, is used to unsatisfying conclusions. Of the 10 complaints he’s filed since a major campaign finance law change in 2018, most have ended with a negligible fine after years of waiting, even when investigators uncovered wrongdoing.

The SCV case is the only one that’s led to a criminal charge. Hall isn’t exactly counting that as a win.

Before 2018, campaign finance investigations were semi-public. The State Board of Elections was allowed to share some investigation details with reporters and members of the public. The Board conducted public hearings on cases, which allowed candidates to defend themselves and gave investigators a forum to uncover new details from the public.

“I’m sure, for a politician that was accused of wrongdoing, it was also a terrifying process, but it was one that would be much more in line with the values of open government transparency,” said Pate McMichael, director of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition.

Not anymore. A 2018 law shielded the public from campaign finance investigations from beginning to end. The elections board is no longer allowed to share complaints or investigation details. Hearings are privately conducted, as are newly required State Ethics Commission recommendations and any criminal referrals.

The only way investigation information comes out is if criminal charges are filed, or the person who filed the complaint shares it with the public.

Supporters, like State Rep. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, argue that the secretive process protects candidates from facing negative consequences for being falsely accused of breaking campaign finance law.

But critics like Hall say it only serves wrongdoers.

SCV campaign finance scheme

When controversy arose over whether Confederate monuments and statues should be removed from places of prestige in the mid-2010s, the Sons of Confederate Veterans wanted them to stay put.

That included Silent Sam, a Confederate statue on the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill campus. In 2016, SCV created a political action committee, NC Heritage PAC, to that effect.

Its stated purpose was to “support candidates who support NC’s heritage,” according to campaign finance filings.

While in existence, NC Heritage PAC contributed $35,000 to Republican campaigns, including those of agricultural commissioner Steve Troxler, Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, and former House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, who is now in Congress.

When protesters toppled Silent Sam in 2018, SCV leaders wanted the statue returned to them.

They sued UNC and got a settlement which would give SCV $2.5 million to preserve and maintain the statue away from UNC’s campuses.

In a leaked email to the group’s members, SCV Commander Kevin Stone celebrated the settlement and outlined attempts to lobby the legislature over the statue issue. A judge, later realizing the settlement was pre-planned, rejected it and made SCV return most of the money.

Finance issues come to light, disappear into dark

The Daily Tar Heel’s reporting on the Silent Sam issue raised several red flags for Hall.

First of all, as a 501(c)(3), the Sons of Confederate Veterans should never have been allowed to create a political action committee, he said.

Second, some money intended for the SCV’s mechanized cavalry was instead funnelled into the NC Heritage PAC by a leader, Hall’s complaint alleged.

Third, SCV leaders allegedly gave members money to donate to the NC Heritage PAC in their name, even though it wasn’t their money. Under North Carolina law, it’s illegal to make a contribution in someone else’s name.

Rogers said SCV leader Bill Starnes gave him $100 and told him to give it to the person collecting donations when they called Rogers’ name.

“So I took it up there, and I thought, that’s weird. What was that about?” he said. “And then they sent me a thing saying I needed to sign it for tax purposes.”

The North Carolina State Board of Elections conducted a campaign finance investigation into the NC Heritage PAC, and found that the political action committee accepted contributions made in the name of another and cash contributions over $50, which carry a misdemeanor charge, according to the complaint closure provided to Carolina Public Press by Hall. They also found that the PAC’s treasurers knowingly signed reports that were not correct, which carries a felony charge.

In June 2021, the elections board referred the case to Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman. Nearly four years later, the treasurers pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of accepting cash contributions over $50.

Freeman did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Hall thinks it should have ended differently.

“It was an illegal operation, and the donations should have been returned,” he said.

Campaign finance ‘wild, wild West’

McMichael was surprised to see that the SCV investigation took nearly four years to resolve after being criminally referred.

“What complaints are we not hearing about?” McMichael asked.

“How long are those taking to be investigated? And do we really even have a functioning campaign finance apparatus in place in the state, or is it just a wild, wild West?”

While the public doesn’t know the content of campaign finance complaints filed since the law change, CPP received aggregate data from the State Board of Elections.

Since 2019, the board has received 168 campaign finance complaints.

In the same timeframe, 69 complaints have been closed, either because no violation was found, there wasn’t enough evidence to show a violation was intentional or corrective action was taken. Sometimes, the board gets multiple complaints concerning the same issue, which are counted separately.

Hall shared his recent complaints with CPP. Of the 10 filed since the law change, half took longer than two years to resolve.

One campaign finance complaint filed in 2018 and closed in 2020, found that Court of Appeals Judge Phil Berger Jr. failed to disclose who paid for his fundraising events. Berger is the son of the Republican state Senate leader.

Another case involved a slew of errors in Mark Robinson’s lieutenant governor campaign, including more than 100 illegal anonymous contributions totalling nearly $10,000, incomplete or missing info in a third of reviewed expenses and $12,000 in illegal contributions from committees not registered in North Carolina.

Finally, an ongoing campaign finance investigation alleges that a video poker industry group, the NC Coin Operators Association, bundled donor checks illegally between 2019 and 2022 to try to evade contribution limits and PAC reporting requirements, to the tune of $885,000.

Besides Robinson’s $35,000 fine, none of the investigations resulted in more than a warning letter and an order to amend reports with correct information.

“There’s not the resources to conduct an investigation in a timely manner, in a thorough way,” Hall said. “The State Board has been starved for money by the legislature, and the investigative operation for campaign finance issues has suffered and the public has suffered as a result.”

It’s hard to say where exactly the bottleneck is, McMichael said.

“We can’t look at the file and put it in chronological order to see what actions were taken by whom,” he said.

There’s also the issue of bureaucratic discretion, Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper said. The severity of campaign finance violations varies widely, from late reports to widespread fraud, and North Carolina law doesn’t narrowly describe how each should be handled, he said.

That leaves election staff to decide what punishment, if any, is appropriate. This may lead to a lack of clear enforcement, especially when investigators are tasked with determining whether a violation was intentional or accidental.

“There’s no bright red line that tells us when somebody’s making a simple mistake and when somebody is trying to fraud,” Cooper said.

Ultimately, voters pay the price of more secretive campaign finance laws.

Money talks, said Jean-Patrick Grillet, Democracy NC election protection research manager. It can illuminate candidates’ true intentions, and direct their actions when in office, he said. But under the current law, it may be harder for voters to know the decision they’re making when they cast a ballot.

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