As predicted here this morning, Jim Black’s defenders have trotted out the “everyone does it” defense before the state election board. The only mild surprise is that Jim Black himself used it during his testimony.
Mitch Kokai has the details from Raleigh:
N.C. House Speaker Jim Black says he does not believe optometrists broke campaign finance laws by contributing to political campaigns through series of incomplete checks.
The N.C. State Optometric Society political action committee gave Black $4,000 during the 2003-2004 election cycle. Elections board chairman Larry Leake says the committee’s leader — M. Scott Edwards — collected several thousand dollars in additional funds for Black.
Leake suggested the additional money could violate at least the spirit of the state’s $4,000 limit on campaign contributions to an individual campaign.
Black disagrees. “If it does violate the law, then everyone’s violating the law,” Black testified. “Not everybody, but a whole lot of groups are because that’s a common practice.”
Translated into the crony-speak native tongue of our state officials, which includes our Board of Elections by the way, that means: “If I’m going down, I’m taking a lot of you SOBs with me.”
This is not over by a longshot.
