Paid campaign accountants, employees of state and local boards of elections — people who have to — plus political junkies, good government types and a few others with too much free time typically leaf through campaign finance reports.
They’re deadly dull, and when filed properly — a mighty big variable — include page after page of donor names and the amounts of the checks stroked by people wealthy enough to toss their money into the wind.
And those reports, required by state law of candidates, don’t include so-called “dark” money raised (and spent) by shadowy political action committees.
Still, reading the reports (or better yet, getting someone else to do it for you) can help cast a more informed ballot.
To wit: paperwork filed in arguably the most competitive local race — retired District Judge Denise Hartsfield trying to unseat incumbent District Attorney Jim O’Neill — shows a remarkable imbalance.
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Printing money
The money raised (and spent) in high-profile federal and state races is obscene. Wrong-headed decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court made it so.
The most infamous would be the Citizens United ruling, which codified in 2010 twisted logic which has it that cash equals speech and corporations are people, guaranteeing for the foreseeable future that the wealthy control the levers of power.
In North Carolina, in case you don’t watch TV or listen to over-the-air commercial radio, the most expensive would be the race to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Richard Burr — pandemic profiteer and the face of renewed interest in limiting stock trades by elected officials.
According to Opensecrets.org, that race through the beginning of August was the tenth priciest in the nation with some $31.7 million raised.
That figure includes cash raised by Republican Ted Budd and Democrat Cheri Beasley, as well as money scooped up by candidates who lost in primaries. It includes neither dark money nor what’s been raised since.
But let’s face it. Obscene though it may be, $31.7 million might as well be pink and yellow Monopoly bills to voters who live paycheck to paycheck.
For my money, the most interesting report — with the potential to make a significant difference — involves the race for Forsyth County district attorney.
Hartsfield
The facts, as self reported by Friends of Jim O’Neill and Hartsfield for District Attorney to the State Board of Elections at the end of June, the most recent available, include:
O’Neill
The O’Neill campaign submitted 20 pages of detailed receipts showing the incumbent Republican started the second quarter with a beginning balance of $184,148 and a total of $250,600 for this election cycle.
His campaign raised $57,300 in the second quarter, plenty of it through maximum individual contributions of $5,600, and had $237,173 left by June 30.
Hartsfield’s campaign, by comparison, reported 92 donations in generally smaller amounts.
The Democrat’s report showed a second quarter beginning balance of $11,495 and total receipts of $34,566 for this election cycle.
Cash on hand at the end of the quarter — the bottom line — was reported at $22,232.
More to come
So far — this is just early October — the imbalance mostly shows up in terms of advertising.
O’Neill, you might have seen, has been on TV early and often touting the D.A.’s work against domestic violence.
An anonymous victim fills the screen and extols the conviction rate earned by the office. The truth of the matter is, hammering convicted domestic abusers matters.
Going after violent offenders is far more important than, say, empty support for a juvenile curfew. A quarter-million buys a lot of TV time.
Oh, and perhaps more insidiously, dark money in the past few days has managed to find its way into even this local race.
A YouTube ad, sponsored by a group calling itself the Defend US political action committee, lights Hartsfield up for two well-documented missteps: a suspension for cutting corners dealing with traffic tickets and OK’ing the release in 2010 of an accused domestic abuser, a Wake Forest basketball player, thereby sparing him from a required 24-hour cooling-off period.
The flip side for Hartsfield is that $34,566 might buy some direct mailings, yard signs bound to clutter rights of way for the next month and possibly social media ad spots, too.
If left-leaning PACs care — they may not — and are clever enough, they might hit up YouTube with clips of O’Neill fully embracing former President Trump in an over-the-top 2020 performance at a rally at Smith Reynolds Airport.
Will at least a 10-to-1 edge in cash on hand, plus the recent appearance of attack ads with the tag line “not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee” make a difference in a county with 102,610 registered Democrats, 72,739 Republicans and 90,732 unaffiliated voters?
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