Triangle CEO fined for campaign donations to SC governor & attorney general
The money rolled into South Carolina’s attorney general and governor campaigns during the 2018 election — $52,500 in total. All appeared to be from several Raleigh-area businesses that included a lube shop, an HVAC contractor and a fast-growing medical lab.
That normally wouldn’t be a problem. Unlike North Carolina, South Carolina allows businesses to make campaign donations.
But when the state’s ethics commission looked closely at the donations, they discovered none came from the business accounts. All came from the personal credit card of Chad Price, the CEO of Raleigh-based Mako Medical, who owned or co-owned the firms, according to a consent order.
Last month, the commission fined Price $20,000 and charged him another $5,000 in administrative fees for violating the state’s law on campaign contribution limits.
Price was not eligible to make the donations himself because he had maxed out on personal campaign donations to both candidates — Attorney General Alan Wilson and Gov. Henry McMaster — for the 2018 election.
Price could not be reached by phone or email. Wilson and McMaster’s campaigns returned the donations as required under South Carolina law, according to a consent order Price signed.
South Carolina’s ethics commission began investigating Price’s donations in 2019 after his parents, Larry and Susan Price of Clayton, filed multiple complaints about him. They did so after seeing records saying their disabled daughter had made political donations to five candidates in four states.
Jessica Price lived with a disability and the mental capacity of a young child and was incapable of making such donations. Chad Price had won guardianship of his sister, who died earlier this year, from her parents in 2013.
The consent order that Price signed said that he initially reported to South Carolina investigators that the companies all paid him for the donations he made. He later admitted there were no reimbursements.
Each of the donations was for $3,500 -- the maximum allowed under South Carolina law. Ten of the donations, totaling $35,000, went to Wilson’s campaign; another five totaling $17,500 went to McMaster’s campaign. Both men won their elections that year and are up for re-election this year.
Meghan Walker, the commission’s executive director, said in a brief interview said only that Price paid the $25,000.
An attorney representing Price told the commission that both campaigns told the North Carolina executive that he could make donations in the name of businesses. In response, commission members cut the fine from a maximum $30,000.
Only one campaign representative was identified by name – Rebecca Mustian, who worked for Wilson’s re-election.
Mustian is the daughter of Richard Quinn Sr., who founded a prominent political consulting firm in South Carolina that helped manage the campaigns of Republicans, including Wilson, McMaster and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, The (Columbia, S.C.) State reported.
In a brief interview, she said she had little knowledge of the case.
Three months after receiving the donations, Wilson wrote a glowing letter about Mako Medical that exaggerated the company’s status in the health care world. Wilson later admitted to the News & Observer he didn’t write it; it was largely based on details Price had given one of Wilson’s staffers.
Price’s parents filed their complaints in 2019 in several states and the Federal Election Commission. The News & Observer later identified roughly $560,000 in campaign donations connected to Price over a five-year period to various state and federal candidates or political committees in eight states.
Jessica Price was 39 when she died in February after being pulled from a bathtub in a townhome that Chad Price owns in East Raleigh, according to a 911 tape The News & Observer obtained. The state medical examiner has yet to release an autopsy explaining the circumstances of her death.
Campaign finance investigations sparked by donations in her name continue in West Virginia and North Carolina. A prosecutor in Kentucky opted not to prosecute, claiming the state’s campaign finance laws were too antiquated to properly investigate, and the FEC deadlocked when it voted on potential violations.
Larry Price, the businessman’s father, said Monday that he was surprised South Carolina took action, but did not think the penalty fit the misconduct.
“It looks like chump change compared to what he gave,” Price said of his son, who gave a total of $70,000 to both South Carolina candidates. “It makes you wonder. You know this stuff probably goes on everywhere all the time. Is there a deterrent there for people not to do it?”
Chad Price has attracted additional action by state regulators this summer. Earlier this month, North Carolina’s Division of Motor Vehicles closed a license plate agency in Holly Springs that he had won the state contract to operate.
The DMV found that the agency had misused a process designed to expedite title work for auto dealers and other businesses handling large numbers of vehicles. Price told the N&O he wasn’t involved in the agency’s day-to-day operations.
This story was originally published August 31, 2022 at 6:35 PM.