Fellow Republican first investigated candidate accused of not living in Raleigh district
Republican officials may have known long ago about allegations that their candidate for a key state Senate district doesn’t live in the district, his opponent in this year’s GOP primary said Friday.
On Wednesday, a complaint backed by the state Democratic Party claimed that E.C. Sykes, the Republican nominee for Senate District 18, doesn’t live where he’s registered to vote.
The Democrats’ challenge came too late to potentially force Sykes off the ballot, so any investigation will have to wait until after the election. If he wins, then the Wake County Board of Elections — and, likely, the State Board of Elections after that — will have to determine if he was eligible to run, and if not, then what to do about it.
But it wasn’t the first time Sykes’ residency came into question. Sykes’ opponent in the Republican Party primary this spring, Dimitry Slabyak, said he looked into it during that race. He even posted about it on Facebook nearly two months ago, after the May 17 primary election but well before the Democratic complaint came to light.
“EC Sykes didn’t have a physical residence in District 18 when he first filed,” Slabyak wrote in one of those posts, which received one like. “... Don’t believe me, look at my public finances. I spent thousands on legal to investigate him during the primary.”
Salbyak just wasn’t able to bring it over the finish line because his campaign ran out of money before it was complete, he said in an interview Friday.
“We didn’t have enough funds to continue ... but I continue to believe he doesn’t live in the district and the election was stolen from me,” Slabyak said.
What do legal records show?
Public records show Slabyak’s campaign ran its investigation through a prominent Raleigh law firm that often works closely with the NCGOP, Brooks Pierce. The firm also led a different residency challenge earlier this summer against a Democratic Senate candidate, Valerie Jordan.
So it’s possible Republican insiders knew about the questions over Sykes’ eligibility to run, even if he was the party’s clear favorite in the primary. Sykes has an established record — he ran for N.C. secretary of state in 2020, and was heavily involved in Texas politics before that — while Slabyak was a first-time candidate.
“The GOP was very condescending to any new candidates,” Slabyak said.
Craig Schauer and Greg Gaught were the Brooks Pierce attorneys who worked on the GOP’s complaint against Jordan. Schauer also represented former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s 2016 campaign in court. Slabyak declined to say which attorneys worked with him on the Sykes investigation. And since he never formally filed it, that information isn’t public.
Dylan Watts, who runs state Senate campaigns for the NCGOP, said no one ever approached him with the allegations about Sykes’ residency. He dismissed the Democrats’ complaint this week as politically motivated.
Sykes declined to be interviewed but passed along a written statement Friday through a campaign consultant, in which he called the complaint desperate and frivolous. He said he plans to spend the rest of the election ignoring the allegations, and instead talking to voters “about what they care about, which is the rising cost of living and Biden’s failed economic policies, not political stunts.”
The GOP primary pitted Sykes, a recent Texas transplant and manufacturing executive, against Slabyak, an executive with Raleigh tech company Nucleaus. Sykes cruised to victory, winning 85% of the vote after personally loaning his campaign over a quarter-million dollars and raising tens of thousands more from supporters — far eclipsing the $14,611 Slabyak raised.
Now Sykes faces Democrat Mary Wills Bode, the former leader of the group North Carolinians For Redistricting Reform.
In an interview Friday, Bode said she doesn’t buy Sykes’ claim that he lives in the district.
“I saw his quote was that this is ‘just smoke,’” she said. “But you know what they say about smoke? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
What’s at stake?
Senate District 18 is currently held by Democratic Sen. Sarah Crawford, who is running for a House seat this year. The Senate seat is a top priority for both parties this year, as one of just a handful in the chamber that are competitive.
Republicans currently hold 28 of 50 Senate districts. If they flip this seat and one other, they’d have a 30-seat supermajority. That would allow them to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes even without any Democratic support.
“This seat will determine the balance of power in the state Senate,” Bode said.
As with many races this year, abortion is a big topic. Republican leaders told reporters they wouldn’t attempt passing new abortion restrictions this year, despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade, because they knew they didn’t have the votes to override Cooper’s veto.
A supermajority, however, would render his veto powerless.
“My grandmother’s best friend died from a botched back-alley abortion,” Bode said. “... And to think that North Carolina could be a place where that is the reality, is terrifying. I mean, I’m 35. My friends are having children, and second children, and people are coming up to me with tears in their eyes saying ‘Do they know I could die because of this?’”
Sykes, who was in charge of religious outreach for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, is a strong abortion opponent. In one candidate questionnaire this year, he wrote that, “I believe abortion should be outlawed in nearly all situations.”
In his questionnaire and a followup interview with The N&O, he softened that stance somewhat, saying he’d support criminal charges against doctors or others involved in an abortion, but not the women themselves.
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This story was originally published October 21, 2022 at 5:06 PM.
