If you are interested in the link between money and politics on the state level, then you should be interested on the local level as well.
If you are growing skeptical of our election process and the pay-to-play mentality that is alive and well with politicians and supporters, you will be interested in this story.
You decide what to make of it.
A Political Action Committee (PAC) named North Central Citizens for Change filed a report with the North Carolina State Board of Elections that reveals some election facts about how money plays a part in local elections and the influence money has.
This committee’s address is P.O. Box 527, Kittrell, North Carolina. The Appointed Treasurer is Stephanie H. Rogers. This report covers April 1, 2008 to June 30, 2008 and is listed as their final report. A certification to end the PAC was filed on July 3, 2008.
The contributions to this PAC were from individuals as well as committees:
All of these contributions were listed as coming in on May 5, 2008 with the exception of Fox, who gave his money on April 22, 2008. All of the money was given in checks.
Political Committees also made contributions to the PAC in Kittrell:
All of these committee contributions were by check and dated May 5, 2008.
The next question the report answers is where did the North Central Citizens for Change, the PAC in Kittrell, disburse these contributions?
With other incidentals, the North Central Citizens for Change list in their report on July 3, 2008 that they had receipts of $18,564.27 and disbursed $18,564.27. The financial institution was Union Bank and Trust Co. in Oxford North Carolina who paid the PAC $14.27 in interest.
I don’t know about you, but May 5, 2008, (coincidentally the Cinco de Mayo) was a very productive day for the North Central Citizens for Change. Wonder what kind of change they were working for in North Central? Wonder if they got their money’s worth? Their report lists $17,814.27 in operating expenditures. That was some expensive operation.
The PAC declared itself a “Get Out the Vote” organization. Don’t forget the election was held on May 6, 2008.
How many people can you turn out to vote in 24 hours, anyway?
We could play twenty questions all day with this information, but the real challenge should go out to our elected officials, Mr. Berger, Mr. Crawford, and Mr. Wray to tell us who their PAC supported and to account for the fund raising activities of the Roger’s Group and the distribution to that coporation of $7,629.43 of highly regulated political money. Playing ignorant on this issue is not acceptable.
Between the three of these elected representitives, they were responsible for $9,000 of the PAC’s money, slightly over half of its total assets. When you give this amount of money, you should know where it is going, what it is going to be used for, and, most importantly, what you will get out of it.
Was this a way for candidates to align with other candidates? Was this spreading around money to maintain power? These campaign contributions had to be disclosed, but who would have known that the North Central Citizens for Change even existed so he or she could play this game of political connect the dots?
There is one more piece to this puzzle, but that will come later.
It should not surprise these elected representatives that we are all going to be far more cynical when it comes to judging their reliability. We now know where this money came from, but you will have to excuse me if I am skeptical about where it really went. Lots of money changed hands in a very few days. This may be business as usual for them, but it is not good business for us, and we (voters and taxpayers) deserve better.
Remember, the filing deadline is February 26.