One of N.C. House Speaker Jim Black’s lawyers is questioning the interpretations of a chief N.C. elections board investigator.
Attorney John Wallace says he doesn’t agree with deputy elections director Kim Westbrook Strach that incomplete checks forwarded from optometrists to their statewide political group constituted contributions to that group.
The distinction could help determine whether the optometrists, their political group, and the political committees of Black and former Rep. Michael Decker violated several campaign finance laws.
The N.C. Board of Elections spent the past two days outlining the disputed practice. Optometrists across the state submitted series of checks to the N.C. State Optometric Society political action committee. The checks had signatures and values of up to $100 apiece. The dates and the “payee” lines were left blank.
Testimony has shown that the head of the political group — M. Scott Edwards — then distributed the checks to political campaigns over the course of several months. Strach says that means Edwards used the incomplete checks as contributions from the political action committee.
Through his questions, Wallace is putting forward the argument that the checks constitute contributions from individuals — not the optometrists’ group.
