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Note: Follow Wednesday's hearings live online at this Capital Beat blog post

ANALYSIS

RALEIGH — Good government campaigners have long labeled high-dollar campaign donations as corrosive to the political process. Maybe they ought to blame such donations for memory loss as well.

As the State Board of Elections Tuesday continued to unpack questions revolving around campaign fundraising and spending by former Gov. Mike Easley , they faced a roster of witnesses who had trouble recalling relevant and basic details of their involvement with the two-term Democrat.

Take Gary Allen , a real estate developer who on June 29, 2003, wrote a $50,000 check to the North Carolina Democratic Party. That was about the same time he was trying to work out a key permit for a development on the coast.

“Would you share with us, please sir, the circumstances that led to you giving that check?” asked Larry Leake , chairman of the state board.

“No, I don’t recall the details on it,” Allen said. “At the time — it was about six years ago — over the course of those years and the years before, I made many contributions not only to candidates and the Democratic Party but to nonprofits as well.”

So it has gone Monday and Tuesday, with witnesses like Allen who could not remember why they wrote such big checks to the party and campaign functionaries who could not say how those checks were solicited.

Easley himself is expected to testify today in what could be the last day of the board’s hearings into his fundraising practices.

The board is investigating — among other things — whether the Easley campaign and Democratic Party too closely coordinated their fundraising efforts, perhaps abusing what many election observers say is a loophole that needs to be closed.

State law allows donors to give candidates no more than $4,000 during a primary and another $4,000 for the general election.

However, individuals can give virtually unlimited contributions to state parties. Those parties can, in turn, spend unlimited sums to help their candidates. But candidates can’t solicit donations for parties with the promise that the money is really coming back to help their particular campaign.

Leake and others pushed Allen on who solicited the donation and its timing.

“In your mind, sir, when you wrote that $50,000 check, were you making a contribution to Mike Easley or the North Carolina Democratic Party?” Leake asked.

Allen replied, “The North Carolina Democratic Party, but I think, you know, there was probably some assumption that Easley and others would benefit from it.”

And there-in lies the problem with this particular loophole, election observers say. Even if this contribution was solicited in exactly the right way —even if Allen is either so generous or so wealthy he really can’t remember why he cut a $50,000 check — it raises questions that candidates and donors have a hard time answering.

“That provision has undermined the ability of the state board to effectively enforce the spending limits and contribution limits,” said Charles Winfree , a State Board of Elections member from Greensboro. “It encourages deceit, and it encourages people to think that they can have a bigger sway over candidates than the $4,000 limit.”

In Allen’s case, there’s a whiff of pay-to-play politics.

Allen in 2003 was having trouble getting a permit from the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources for a boat ramp at a project known as Oyster Harbour in Brunswick County. Those discussions were ongoing as Easley was governor — overseeing the department — and Allen made his initial $50,000 donation to the party as well as a subsequent $50,000 donation.

“To me, none of that was tied together,” Allen said. He added that his company eventually had to build a specially designed ramp that was more expensive than typical to avoid environmental issues.

To be clear: political parties and their candidates are allowed to coordinate expenditures and fundraising. It would be inefficient to craft multiple get-out-the-vote efforts for candidates allied under the same party banner. And it is reasonable to expect candidates to pick up their fair share of that tab. In fact, Democratic Party lawyers presented figures to the board that in the 2000 campaign cycle alone, Easley raised $935,000 for the party.

The question is whether donors were told that money was really going to help Easley directly or whether they were promised anything in return.

“If there is a budget or a line item somewhere which is the amount of monies the Easley campaign is to receive from the Democratic Party in return for contributions having been raised, that would be illegal,” Leake said.

But a key figure in this board’s investigation says it will take more than closing a single loophole to avoid similar appearances of conflict going forward.

“That would stop the kind of cheating, lying and stealing that we’ve seen,” said Bob Hall of Democracy North Carolina. He filed the complaint that helped spark the state board’s investigation.

Further restrictions on fundraising would not head off instances where campaigns simply don’t report in-kind donations of airplane flights, as testimony Monday showed might be the case with Easley. “The use of the party has a lot to do with the campaign’s need for huge amounts of money.”

Hall advocates for public financing of elections, which he said would create a clean funding stream free from pay-to-play, real or perceived.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com