Is North Carolina rolling out the red carpet for a return of “pay-to-play” politics by failing to address campaign finance irregularities? (Photo of NC Legislative Building by Clayton Henkel)
There was a time in North Carolina, not that many years ago, when the state’s political establishment – elected leaders, judges, regulators, lobbyists, reporters, reform advocates – were hugely and rightfully obsessed with the laws governing campaign finance and political influence peddling.
In the early 2000s, spurred on by the energetic muckraking of a nationally acclaimed government watchdog named Bob Hall and, in particular, his courageous investigations of Democratic state House Speaker Jim Black, campaign finance laws and lobbying laws (and the corruption they were designed to police) frequently dominated lawmaking in the Legislative Building and the state’s political news headlines.
Indeed, under the honest and able leadership of Black’s successor as Speaker, Chapel Hill Democrat Joe Hackney, Black’s fall and ultimate conviction and imprisonment on federal corruption charges soon gave rise to the enactment of new and far-reaching statues designed to tackle and rein in the “pay-to-play” politics that moneyed interests had used so widely and effectively to buy influence in state government.