Robin Hayes had a distinguished career until Donald Trump came along. Hayes, an heir to the Cannon textile fortune,  served in the legislature and Congress and was capping off his political career by serving as Chair of the North Carolina Republican Party. Now, he’s under indictment for facilitating bribes after spending most of the last few months defending and denying corruption in the Ninth Congressional District.  

Yesterday, the FBI announced that Hayes, insurance businessman Greg Lindberg and two of his associates, including former Chatham County Republican Chair John Palermo, conspired to bribe Commissioner of Insurance Mike Causey. Unfortunately for them, Causey may be one of the last Republicans putting his principles before his party. He wore a wire as Hayes and the insurance guys offered to put millions of dollars into his campaign coffers if he would get rid of a DOI administrator who was causing Lindberg problems. The U. S. Justice Department called it “brazen.”

In the wake of the election fraud scandal in NC-09, Hayes initially took the high road, declaring that the fraud likely demanded a new election. He quickly reversed course, though, and spent the next few months claiming there was no real evidence of fraud and that Mark Harris should be seated. Hayes never admitted error after Harris broke on the stand and called for a new election to prevent himself from committing perjury. 

Clearly, both the events of NC-09 and the ones exposed yesterday lay bare the problems with our electoral system. Much of it comes down to money in politics. MacRae Dowless was willing to try to game the absentee ballot system if he was paid enough money and Mark Harris was just the type of guy ambitious enough to pay it. In the chase for big dollar donations, the GOP found Greg Lindberg, a deep-pocketed businessman willing to pay millions for access to politicians. He not only tried to bribe Causey but he legally shoveled millions of dollars into GOP political coffers, much of it into dark money funds designed to circumvent campaign finance limits. His millions lays bare the folly of the Citizen United decision. It has little do with speech and everything to do with access. 

At the root of Hayes’ problem though is an organizational culture within the Republican Party that has been polluted by Donald Trump. The swamp that Trump pledged to drain has been filled to capacity and is now spilling into states like North Carolina. Winning has replaced conservativism as the core value of the Republican Party and to the victors go the spoils.  Instead of combatting corruption, officials like Hayes lie and deny just like the president, hoping if they say it long enough, either the public will believe them or the problem will go away. 

In North Carolina, the GOP’s main excuse has been that “Democrats did it, too.” They spent three months claiming MacRae Dowless worked for Democrats first. Yesterday, they blamed Lindberg, saying he gave to Democrats, too. The difference is that when Democrats had power, they policed themselves. A Democratic political operative was the driving force behind exposing disgraced Democratic House Speaker Jim Black. The Democratic State Board of Elections investigated Democratic Governor Mike Easley. The Republican Party today doesn’t even try. Their default position is to obstruct and deny like Trump did with the Mueller investigation. So much winning.