The N.C. Board of Elections’ top campaign finance investigator has testified that N.C. House Speaker Jim Black solicited a fellow optometrist for money to help an ally.
Kim Westbrook Strach is sharing details of an interview she conducted last month with optometrist M. Scott Edwards of Murfreesboro, the treasurer of the N.C. State Optometric Society political action committee.
Edwards has cited his Fifth Amendment rights in refusing to testify himself.
Strach says Edwards told her that Black had called Edwards to seek help in raising money for then Rep. Michael Decker. Strach says Edwards responded with two checks — a $4,000 check from the optometrists’ PAC to the Decker campaign and a $4,000 check with the “payee” line blank.
Strach says Edwards told her he gave the incomplete check to Black “to do with as he saw fit.” Strach says Edwards also said he would not have supplied the checks for Decker without the speaker’s request.
