The campaign of Gov. Bev Perdue on Friday forfeited $48,000 for what it said were questionable campaign contributions from nine donors who all work for or are related to a major Democratic fundraiser.
The campaign of Perdue, a Democrat, said in a statement it was "concerned that some or all of the contributors involved may have been reimbursed by their employer." It is illegal in North Carolina for someone to provide another person with money to give to a campaign, or to pay them back for a donation.
The contributors are all linked to Rusty Carter, who owns the Atlantic Corp., a packaging company in Wilmington.
A review of campaign finance reports shows that the same nine people also made similar donations, totaling $44,500 in 2008, to the campaign of influential Senate leader Marc Basnight, a Manteo Democrat. Basnight's chief of staff, Amy Fulk, said in an e-mail message that Basnight is seeking guidance from elections regulators on the contributions to him and whether they "were made unlawfully."
"If any such donations are found to have been unlawfully given, Senator Basnight will of course take the appropriate measures to remove them from his account," Fulk wrote.
The prohibition against "giving in the name of another" is aimed at ensuring that campaign contribution limits are followed and that the actual donors to a candidate are fully disclosed. Openness is a major goal of modern campaign laws.
It is also illegal for a corporation to make direct contributions to a candidate.
Efforts to reach Carter were unsuccessful. A lawyer for Carter's company said he and Carter were working to make full disclosures.
"We have already contacted the relevant authorities and offered to fully cooperate," lawyer Michael Murchison wrote in an e-mail message.
Murchison declined to answer questions about how the donations came about, how they were delivered to the campaign, or who organized the donations. "I'm not at liberty to discuss it," he said.
Most of the contributions to Perdue and Basnight were in 2008, though some are from 2005. Many of the donors, who were identified as being part of the management team at Atlantic Corp., have also given to other local and statewide candidates in the past decade.
The Atlantic Corp. has some business dealings with state government, but Murchison did not detail the scope, calling it "trivial."
State Board of Elections officials said they were aware of the developments, but declined comment.
Carter's connections
Carter has been a major campaign money-raiser for years, at times working closely with Wilmington developer Lanny Wilson to host fundraisers and bring in the tens of thousands of dollars that candidates need to finance statewide campaigns.
There are no requirements under state law for such people to disclose how much they raise for candidates, other than for members of the state Board of Transportation.
Wilson testified to making illegal contributions under questioning in an elections hearing last year that examined the campaign of former Gov. Mike Easley.
Carter, a fraternity brother of Easley's when they attended UNC-Chapel Hill, was also subpoenaed to testify at the hearing, but he was not called upon. A week before the hearing, the Easley campaign forfeited money related to a flight in 2004 on a plane owned by Carter.
Easley twice appointed Carter as a trustee at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Perdue appointed Carter's wife, Susan, to the board of trustees at UNC-Wilmington last year.
Examining the gifts
Perdue's campaign said it was "unable to make a firm factual determination" about what happened but that it made the forfeiture "because we have become concerned about the integrity of these contributions."
In recent months, Perdue's campaign has made similar disclosures about what it believed were questionable campaign receipts, mostly centering on flights Perdue took but that her campaign said had not been properly accounted for. Elections officials have been probing the campaign's reports, and Republicans have been demanding a thorough investigation.
In a news release Friday, Perdue's campaign officials said the latest forfeiture was not the result of the elections inquiry.
Rather, it said, the matter first came up through a news conference conducted by the Republican Party in which the coordinated contributions were highlighted.
"Their remarks about these contributions raised some questions which we felt needed to be examined," the Perdue committee said in the release. "At no time during the campaign were we aware of - nor would we have condoned - any efforts by any contributor to circumvent compliance."
