Who paid to help oust NC’s Phil Berger? Voters may never know. Here’s why.
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Campaign donor identities in NC remain opaque as many groups aren’t required to disclose.
- Since 2013, under Berger and other legislators, disclosure rules have been scaled back.
- Outside groups outspent Sam Page’s own campaign and boosted his effort.
Much remains unknown about who funded the race that ended Senate leader Phil Berger’s more than two decades in the legislature, with voters electing challenger and Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page to represent the district by fewer than two dozen votes.
A large part of the opacity comes from political advertising by individuals, groups and nonprofits, many of which aren’t required to disclose donors.
Some of those ads, called electioneering communications, mention a candidate but stop short of explicitly urging voters to support or oppose them, a practice often referred to as issue advocacy.
Other spending, known as independent expenditures, can aim to directly influence the outcome of a race so long as it’s not coordinated with a campaign. That is known as express advocacy and carries more disclosure requirements than issue advocacy.
Donors behind both types of spending can be difficult to trace — and tracking outside groups often requires living locally to see mailers and ads or hear about them.
Bob Hall, a campaign finance watchdog, said the opacity is partly due to changes in North Carolina law starting in 2013 under Berger’s Senate leadership, particularly the elimination of donor disclosures previously required for issue ads during primaries.
“If they’re engaging in electioneering or issue advocacy and not express advocacy, they may be able to get away with minimal disclosure and virtually none in a primary to the public,” Hall said. “Berger doesn’t get that disclosure in his own contest.”
Here’s a look at what is known so far about spending in the race.
Groups involved in the Berger and Page race
Berger had a lot more money (almost $3 million) going directly to his campaign than Page did, and he also had help from outside groups that spent millions in the race.
One of the biggest outside spenders was NC True Conservatives, a political action committee that supports or opposes candidates independently of the campaigns, which reported donations and spending on Feb. 24.
That group spent much of its money on ads made by a firm run by political consultants Jim Blaine and Ray Martin, both of whom have worked for Berger in the past. A large portion of the committee’s funding came indirectly from the Republican State Leadership Committee, the national organization that works to elect GOP state-level officials.
But even in the Berger camp, where a lot of the money can be traced, “there could be six different other groups who put out mailers,” unknown to the public, Hall said.
Meanwhile, Page’s campaign raised just over $80,000. But, outside groups were quietly boosting his campaign, many of which have not filed — and may never file — donor disclosure reports.
Much of what’s known about spending in the Page camp so far has come from those involved in the races: On Feb. 12, Berger’s campaign said in a news release that “Democrat-backed dark money groups” were meddling in the primary to support Page, citing calls by some Democrats to support Page and Democratic ties to known groups spending against Berger.
Berger specifically cited:
- Piedmont Accountability Coalition, an independent expenditure committee, which Berger’s campaign said aired an attack ad against him “for not advancing a Democrat-led health insurance mandate.” The group lists $350,000 in contributions, of which $225,000 came from Sheila Mikhail of Hillsborough. Registered as a Democrat, Mikhail has contributed most often to Democrats and is the founder of multiple biotechnology companies. Other reported donors include John Burress, registered as unaffiliated and a philanthropist, and Richard Samulski, also registered as unaffiliated, a prominent gene therapy scientist and co-founder of several biotechnology companies. Independent expenditure committees can raise and spend unlimited funds as long as they don’t coordinate with candidates.
- NC Families for Prosperity, is a 501(c)4 nonprofit incorporated by Chapel Hill attorney Josh Starin with the law firm Schell Bray. It lists its address on N.C. Secretary of State filings as the headquarters of Maven Strategies, which has worked with Democrats such as North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs. The president of the organization is listed as Owen Berger, who worked for the N.C. Democratic Party.
- NC Partnership for Good Government is also incorporated by Starin. It, too, is a 501(c)4 nonprofit and therefore does not have to file donor disclosures with the State Board of Elections. Such groups are largely overseen by the IRS. They do not generally have to disclose donors and cannot have political activity as their primary purpose, though they can spend unlimited amounts.
WUNC News reported in mid-March that another group supporting Page was the Guilford-Rockingham Alliance, based in Greensboro.
That group is an independent expenditure filer, according to state Board of Elections records. And while it has filed reports with the board, it has not disclosed any donor information as of April 2. State records show the group spent at least $442,000 on ads against Berger.
Asked about this, the board said that under state law, independent expenditure filers are not necessarily required to disclose all donors, citing a law that says that these groups must disclose those where either they or the donor intended, knew or had reason to believe the money would be used to influence a race. Expenditures must be reported either within 30 days after they exceed $100 or 10 days before an election they affect, whichever occurs earlier, according to the state law cited by the board. Reports within 48 hours of an expenditure are also required for high amounts.
Pat Gannon, a spokesperson with the board, said the individual who signs an independent expenditure disclosure report certifies that it is “complete, true and correct.” The board also has the authority to investigate, he said in an email.
Hall said he believed the non-disclosure was a “violation of state law.”
As a brand-new organization, “with a name and purpose clearly focused on influencing voters’ decisions in those counties. It’s fantastical to believe that donations were not solicited or provided without knowledge of an intent to spend on the state Senate contest stretching across the two counties,” he said.
At the federal level, the group is registered as a super PAC — the federal equivalent of an independent expenditure committee. As of April 2, no donor information has been reported there either. The group’s treasurer also serves as treasurer for several other conservative federal PACs.
The N&O emailed the Guilford-Rockingham Alliance on Tuesday about the lack of state and federal donor disclosures. On Thursday, after this article had been published, the group said it would report its expenditures with the Federal Election Commission. They are due by April 15.
Patrick Sebastian, a Republican consultant and founder of Tar Heel Targeting, worked with the Piedmont Accountability Coalition and the Guilford-Rockingham Alliance. He’s the nephew of former Gov. Pat McCrory, who has a loaded history with Berger.
Sebastian said the strategy used by those involved with the groups was to boost turnout in Rockingham County, where Page is the sheriff, to offset expected losses in Guilford County. The theme of ads, he said, largely centered on Berger “essentially not working for you.”
“A Trump endorsement plus a massive amount of money, wins virtually every time,” said Sebastian — and Trump endorsed Berger.
“But I think what people weren’t counting on is that the sheriff had such long-standing relationships in Rockingham County. It really superseded any money or endorsements people had.”
Changes over time
It wasn’t always the case that so much was unknown, said Hall.
In 1998, a group called Farmers for Fairness poured millions into Republican state primaries and in particular targeted then-Rep. Cindy Watson of Duplin County — one of the legislature’s most outspoken critics of the hog industry, according to archives from The News & Observer. The group unleashed a barrage of TV, radio and newspaper ads attacking Watson’s record, though not explicitly calling on voters to vote against her. Watson lost her primary. That year, Democrats won back control of the state House and maintained control of the Senate.
The hog industry debacle sparked a desire to reform election laws, Hall said.
Lawmakers were seeing “in a bipartisan way, that these issue ads were increasingly taking over the election arena and were not being regulated, and they were essentially the same as express advocacy, they just cleverly avoided using certain words” said Hall.
“With the help of legal experts, we crafted, in a bipartisan way, regulations that captured and required disclosure of their financing. It didn’t prohibit them from saying things. They could say stuff, but they had to tell the public where they got the money,” he said.
Those new laws regulating electioneering communications were passed in 2004. They required any ads that mentioned candidates within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election, and where spending exceeded $10,000, to disclose their donors and activity.
But that law has been “whittled away and whittled away after 2013,” Hall said.
Berger has served in the Senate for 25 years, repeatedly chosen by Republican colleagues to lead them — first in the minority, then for 15 years in the majority after Republicans took control following the 2010 election.
The 2004 disclosure rules have since been reduced to apply solely to issue ads running within 30 days before the general election in even-numbered years. They no longer apply to ads airing just before primaries.
This story was originally published April 3, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
