Much confusion afoot over Bev Perdue tying convicted felon Jim Black to Pat McCrory. The AP headline, for example, is exactly wrong: Perdue takes no risk by linking McCrory to Jim Black.
To the extent Bev muddies the issue concerning who is a Raleigh insider and who is not, it all accrues to Bev’s benefit. Plus it is no doubt true that most North Carolina voters are unaware of the extent to which Speaker Black delivered exactly what the Uptown Charlotte crowd wanted, Pat McCrory included.
The half-cent transit tax, the car rental tax hike for the Wachovia Arts Tower/second dedicated funding source for CATS, the hotel-motel tax hike for the NASCAR Hall of Fame/convention center expansion, the $44m. Uptown building for UNCC, the Johnson & Wales incentive/bribe — that is just off the top of my head. Black and McCrory were two peas in a pod on those issues.
This is why McCrory should’ve been much more forceful and direct in blasting the criminal elements at work in Raleigh. Singled-out Jim Black as someone who personally broke his trust and failed to serve his fellow citizens with honor and dignity. Instead, Pat has kept his “culture of corruption” rap fairly amorphous and out-of-focus. As a result, he left an opening for Perdue to try to define McCrory’s relationship with Black. Nothing surprising or shocking there, only that it took so long.
Now Pat is in danger of overreacting to Perdue’s thrust. For example, he cannot run from long-time advisor Stan Campbell. Contrary to McCrory campaign manager Jack Hawke’s claim, Campbell was named the trustee for Black’s legal defense fund not because he serves as a trustee to the federal bankruptcy court (as appointed by Campbell’s former boss Rep. Sue Myrick) but because Campbell and Black shared many close friends. Friends like Charlotte attorney and state Board of Elections member Bob Cordle.
Cordle, you may recall, made a cameo appearance in the Kevin Geddings fiasco. In fact, Cordle evidently suggested Geddings to Black as a good man for the lotto commission. Cordle was so close to Black, neighbors and golfing buddies, he had to recuse himself from board of elections investigations into Black’s money-baggery. That and Cordle’s law firm, Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, was getting paid tens of thousands of dollars a year by Black’s campaign to deal with the state investigations into the Speaker’s activities. It was at that time that Campbell praised Cordle as “a perfect reincarnation of an old-timey lawyer” and declared “I love the guy” in an interview with Jim Morrill in December 2005.
To recap, that is Campbell, trustee of the legal defense fund, who is good friends with the guy who’s law firm stands to get paid by the defense fund.
But for the full picture we have to go back before the turn of the century and the formation of the Alliance for a Better Charlotte, which was an Uptown vehicle set up by Campbell and Cordle expressly to defeat conservative candidates in local elections. By 2000 Campbell and Cordle had a political action committee running with the goal of funding local candidates who would stick to the preferred Uptown corporatist themes. It was a partial success.
One of the first things Uptown wanted was a new arena and Campbell was front-and-center in the unsuccessful 2001 campaign to convince voters to support the arena and arts bundle in June 2001. State election records show that the A Better Charlotte-Mecklenburg PAC received $8000 from the Bank of America PAC in 2001 and that Campbell received some $6000 in consultant’s fees in 2001 from Better Charlotte-Mecklenburg. BofA was the only significant contributor to the PAC, which also funded city council candidates and Mayor McCrory’s campaign.
McCrory appointed Campbell, a former city councilman, to the Airport Advisory board for the city-owned airport in June 2006, three months after Campbell helped set up the Jim Black legal defense fund. Shortly thereafter Campbell was named chairman of the board for a stint and still serves on it today.
This year McCrory’s campaign for governor has paid Campbell $3500 through May, according to state records. Campbell told the N&O that he no longer works for the McCrory campaign.
McCrory also turned to Campbell immediately after Uptown Charlotte between aware of the effort to repeal the half-cent transit tax in the spring of 2007. Campbell was a guest on McCrory’s weekly radio show in March 2007 during which the duo heaped abuse on opponents of the tax and critics of Charlotte’s $9b. transit plan.
Among the donors to the Jim Black legal defense fund was the Teamster’s PAC, which gave $5000 in 2006. Teamsters drive Charlotte’s fleet of city buses.
