It’s a “no duh” in juvenile parlance about political patronage in the North Carolina DMV, as WRAL reported yesterday, but the story is worthwhile and reveals yet another cog (not necessarily the identity, but how it was done) in the Mike Easley operation:
The names of the DMV employees have been redacted from the public
documents, but the high ranking influence is clearly spelled out.
Applicants were recommended by Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand,
then-Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, former Sen. John Kerr and Ruffin Poole,
Easley’s former legal counsel (emphasis mine), among others.
“There’s a fair amount of pressure to hire people,” said Wayne Hurder,
the former DMV deputy commissioner who compiled the list. “People had
to have their finger in the DMV pie….”Hurder also said Poole often influenced hirings.
“He called,
and everyone knew he spoke with the authority of the Governor’s Office.
What happened at N.C. State rang true from my experience,” Hurder said.
And among the final strokes of Easley’s patronage were the hiring of adviser Dan Gerlach as president of Golden LEAF, while his now-colleagues at the McGuire-Woods law firm — John Merritt, Edgar Roach and yes, Ruffin Poole — are LEAF board appointees of the former governor’s. I hope someone other than the useless Roy Cooper is checking this one out, too.
