A long-time campaign finance watchdog filed a complaint against the state chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans on Wednesday, saying organization leaders may have concealed campaign donations to state politicians under other names.
Bob Hall, who for years headed the left-leaning watchdog group Democracy North Carolina, asked the State Board of Elections to investigate and dissolve a political action committee connected to the SCV, the NC Heritage PAC. He also called on the board to require various elected officials, including key Republican leaders in the state, to return $28,500 in donations.
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Hall based much of his complaint on a report earlier this month in The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which laid out violations of various tax laws based on interviews with group members and internal communications.
The SCV has been in the spotlight since the UNC system cut a deal last fall to put $2.5 million in trust for the group to keep the "Silent Sam" Confederate monument off the Chapel Hill campus.
Hall said in his complaint that SCV leaders likely got bad legal advice and believed they could put their 501(c)(3)'s money into an affiliated political action committee, which donated to state lawmakers. State and federal tax laws can be complicated, and they limit what sorts of groups can make political donations.
The more serious allegation may be this: Hall wrote that, "according to The Daily Tar Heel report and allegation(s) from people I interviewed ... some leaders asked NC SCV members to put their names on phony PAC donations, as though the money was their own."
"There’s a lot of controversy around this organization, and this goes to the heart of whether they are a legitimate organization in some ways, because they’re using their tax-exempt status in an illegal way," Hall said.
A division exists within the organization between people strictly interested in Confederate history and those who see it as a cause for political activism, he said.
An attempt to reach the PAC's treasurer Wednesday morning wasn't immediately successful. State SCV Commander Kevin Stone declined comment. WRAL News then emailed a copy of Hall's complaint to the group through its website.
Hall said the state board should require politicians that benefited from the donations to give them up, including Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler, House Speaker Tim Moore, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Rules Chairman David Lewis.
"All the politicians that got money, they need to cough up that money," Hall said. "Not that they did anything wrong, but they got tainted money. It’s almost $30,000. That needs to be turned back to the state board."
When asked whether they plan to forfeit the $2,500 each campaign received from the SCV, Berger's campaign said they would if told to by the State Board of Elections, while Moore's staffers didn't respond to the question.
The legislature passed a law several years ago forbidding the removal of Confederate statues and other war memorials. UNC leaders have said that law tied their hands, and once a crowd pulled Silent Sam down, they used the agreement with the SCV to avoid returning the statue to campus, as the law requires.
The deal caused a backlash, and Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour has a hearing scheduled for Feb. 12 to determine if SCV had the legal standing to enter into the agreement with UNC.
Hall said he hopes the elections board can look into his complaint before then.
"Violations of campaign finance law are criminal violations, and that should give pause to even the judge who’s reconsidering this case or even looking at this case," he said. "[It] should give pause to the public about whether this organization should be the custodian of $2.5 million."
Hall retired from Democracy NC a couple of years ago, but he has continued to plow through campaign finance reports, and he has filed a number of complaints, including one in November against Berger, who has used campaign money to purchase a home in Raleigh.