Republicans came to power in 2010 and 2012 complaining about the cronyism and petty corruption of Democrats in Raleigh. They had a point. Democrats had too many people hanging around state government who were getting too many favors. We heard about sweetheart land deals, free airplane rides, sketchy home repairs, and shady hiring practices.
How quickly things change. Back then, it was donors offering favors to politicians. Under Republicans, it’s politicians offering contracts to donors. No matter which way the money flows, though, it’s all cronyism and it stinks.
For a long time, the stench was confined to the Governor’s office—The Charlotte Way, as one of my Republican friends describes it. McCrory ran on a platform of increasing transparency and ending cronyism. We know now that was just cynical campaign rhetoric.
Instead, he brought his own cronies with him. His first Secretary of Public Safety, Kieran Shanahan, abruptly and mysteriously resigned after questions about him moonlighting at his law practice and sharing office space with a lobbying firm. His chief of staff’s wife opened up a lobbying shop shortly after McCrory took office.
More recently, McCrory has been exposed doing favors for big donors. He extended a prison maintenance contract after a donor, Graeme Keith, complained that he wasn’t getting enough for his money. He started enforcing little used laws to discourage truckers from sleeping on an exit ramp that one big donor, Charlie Shelton, apparently considers part of his driveway.
Now, though, the legislature’s getting into the cronyism act. Senate President Pro-tem Phil Berger admitted that he removed a budget provision that would have required legislative oversight of prison contracts after Graeme Keith called him to complain. Money is power in Raleigh. Maybe it always has been.
Now it looks like the House Rules Chair, Rep. David Lewis, protected a contract for one of his big donors. This time, one day after receiving a $5,000 check from the owner of towing service, Lewis slipped a measure into a technical corrections bill at the last minute to keep towing contracts in private hands. A state agency said that it could do the job better and return money to state schools at the same time.
And what’s have to Lewis say? “Accuse me of trying to fight for my folks. I’m OK with that.” You can substitute the word “donor” for “folks” and you get the whole situation. Obviously, his folks aren’t the ones in public schools.
Pay-to-play is alive and well in Raleigh. If you’ve got the cash, you’ve got the influence. The GOP didn’t change a thing. And as people like the Keith family show, money follows power. Corruption and cronyism are nonpartisan.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
The Republicans told us that the Democrats, after 100 years in office, had become corrupt and intolerable. Looks like they have done the same thing in only five years. Quite efficient, those guys..
McCronyism.
Perhaps we need the feds to investigate. These are clearly crimes by any rational definition.
On some state and university boards, one is required to complete and submit a conflict of interest report. Wonder why the upper echelon of politicians isn’t required to do so.
Back in the early 90’s, we threw the democrats and their secret ‘super sub’s’ out of office and replaced them with the republicans. Within two months, Brubaker and his cronies proved themselves to be even worse than their predecessors, even going so far as to publicly proclaim themselves ‘the only game in town’; and it is abundantly clear little has changed. If we are to keep our elections honest the process must be transparent and that will require electronic voting machines to produce a paper receipt of every vote cast. These machines have been found to be easily and undetectably programed to swap votes and for the first time in voting history, exit polls do not match vote tallies. Without an honest, transparent election process we will be unable to hold our elected representatives to account for their actions in office and if the present trend of improbable republican electoral victories continues, we will soon find ourselves oppressed by right-wing, fascist rule.
Good story. It is hard to keep up with all the corruption today.