NC Senate leader Phil Berger made $80,000 selling his house to a lobbyist
State Senate leader Phil Berger sold his townhouse in Raleigh late last year to a well-connected lobbyist for an $80,000 profit.
Berger was previously the subject of an ethics complaint for paying himself monthly rent for that townhouse out of his campaign account. He bought the home in 2016 for $250,000 and sold it in December for $330,000 — a 32% gain in just three years.
Now, he faces an additional ethics complaint from the same government watchdog, this time focused on the home sale.
State ethics officials knew ahead of time that this sale was in the works and signed off on it, saying it didn’t appear to violate ethical rules. But Bob Hall, the former Democracy NC leader who filed the complaint, says it deserves a closer look from a different set of officials.
Berger is a Republican who represents several rural counties on the Virginia border north of Greensboro. But as one of the state’s most powerful politicians, he spends much of his time in Raleigh. After living for three years in his townhouse just north of downtown off Capital Boulevard, he and his wife bought a unit in a high-end condo building in Glenwood South last September and finalized the sale of their townhouse a few months later.
The Bergers sold it to Tate Apodaca, a lobbyist for numerous business interests. Some of his clients include insurance company Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, tobacco companies Altria and Phillip Morris, and a developer hoping to build a new casino outside of Charlotte — a controversial plan that Berger has opposed.
Apodaca is also the son of former Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Hendersonville Republican who was a top lieutenant to Berger before he left office in 2016 to become a lobbyist. Both Apodacas lobby on behalf of many of the same clients now, and a message left at their firm, Vista Strategies, was not returned Wednesday.
In addition to the $80,000 Berger made selling his home, he also previously took $73,500 from his campaign fund as rent payments to himself, according to veteran government watchdog Hall.
In addition to the townhouse, Berger’s campaign also pays a separate monthly rent payment to his law firm in Eden.
“It’s the type of manipulative, self-serving ‘official action’ that the Legislative Ethics Commission should declare unethical and stop before more legislators follow its model to enrich themselves,” Hall wrote in his new complaint against Berger on Wednesday.
But Dylan Watts, the N.C. Senate Republican Caucus director, provided proof that the state’s top ethics official signed off on the home sale before it went through. He also questioned Hall’s motives.
“How many ridiculous hits does it take for people to fact check Bob Hall before believing his smears as fact?” Watts wrote in an email. “For the second time, the alleged ‘violation’ was pre-approved, this time by the executive director of the State Ethics Commission. This is a non-story about Senator Berger selling his townhome to a longtime family friend for less than the appraised value.”
‘No violation of the gift ban’
The younger Apodaca has been working as a lobbyist in North Carolina only since 2019, according to state records. An undated bio on the elder Apodaca’s lobbying website says that Tate Apodaca was previously “chasing real estate dreams in Colorado.”
The former Berger home appears to be Tate Apodaca’s only real estate investment in Wake County, according to government records, which also show that Apodaca also didn’t pay an exorbitant price for the home.
The $330,000 price tag was $5,000 less than the property’s appraised value, according to Wake County real estate records. And since 2018, the records show, eight properties have sold in the neighborhood off Capital Boulevard, all for between $270,000 and $350,000.
Norma Houston, a legislative ethics expert at the UNC School of Government, said it doesn’t look like either Berger or Apodaca did anything that would run afoul of the state’s laws for lawmakers and lobbyists. She was previously the top lawyer for Berger’s predecessor, Marc Basnight, a Democrat who was the state Senate leader before Republicans took over in 2011.
While there is a prohibition against lawmakers taking gifts from lobbyists, Houston said, state law specifically exempts contracts and other commercial arrangements that are “made in the normal course of business if not made for lobbying.”
In an email, Houston wrote: “did Senator Berger accept an impermissible gift from a lobbyist? In my opinion, the answer is no because the real estate transaction as you have described it does not constitute a gift.
Therefore, she wrote, “there is no violation of the gift ban under the State Ethics Act.”
Two state-government bodies judge questions of ethics and issue opinions: The Legislative Ethics Committee and the State Ethics Commission. Houston said she wasn’t aware of either board having weighed in on this specific issue.
The State Ethics Commission’s executive director, Kathleen Edwards, is the one who pre-approved the sale, according to an email from Edwards to Apodaca that Watts provided. But it’s the ethics board run by the legislature that Hall is asking to look into the sale, especially regarding Berger’s role.
“Regardless of the role Apodaca had in the scheme, the main focus of my complaint is Sen. Berger’s profiteering from official actions he has taken while in public office,” Hall wrote in an email.
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