Who is Greg Lindberg? NC GOP's new big-money donor described as nonpartisan 'bootstrap entrepreneur'

Greg Lindberg, who owns Eli Global, an international investment firm headquartered in Durham, gave $890,000 to the state GOP in 2017, making him, 10 times over, the state party's largest donor last year. There's no one comparable in the state Democratic Party's latest finance reports, which were due to the state last Friday.

Politicians and campaign officials who benefited from the $3.42 million Lindberg gave political campaigns in the state last year told WRAL News they either don't know much about him or they don't want to talk much about him.

Nearly all of his 2017 donations went to Republicans. The exceptions: $10,200 for Farad Ali, a registered Democrat who ran for mayor of Durham last year, and the $100,000 that Lindberg gave a political action committee called the N.C. Opportunity Committee. The PAC's current purpose isn't clear, but it supported Democratic Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin during his unsuccessful 2016 re-election campaign.

Goodwin now chairs the state Democratic Party. He declined an interview request through party spokesman Robert Howard, who said Goodwin wasn't comfortable talking about an individual donor. State Republican Party Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse said the same thing: "I don't talk about individual donors."

Ali didn't return telephone messages Monday or Tuesday, and neither did Sens. Brent Jackson, R-Sampson, and Wesley Meredith, R-Cumberland, to whom Lindberg gave four-figure donations last year.

Lindberg declined interview requests through Aaron Tobin, an attorney in Dallas who forwarded a statement when asked about Lindberg's relatively new interest in North Carolina politics.

"Mr. Lindberg is a longtime North Carolina resident who has supported and who will continue to support in a nonpartisan way candidates that are in tune with the issues affecting North Carolina businesses and its citizens," the statement said. "Mr. Lindberg has given to organizations that support strong candidates on both sides of the aisle to include Democrat and former North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin and Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest."

An online biography, confirmed by Tobin, describes Lindberg as a "bootstrap entrepreneur" who parlayed a small health insurance newsletter into a $1 million business, reinvested the cash and became an international financier.

The biography says he was born in San Mateo, Calif., in 1970, that his father was an airline pilot and that he started a student newspaper at his high school. He is "a strong believer in the freedom of the press and the freedom of the people," the online bio states.

It goes on to say that Lindberg graduated from Yale University with honors and an economics degree and that he "bootstrapped from scratch" his company without outside equity investment. He's heavily invested in the insurance industry, and the biography describes Eli Global as a federation of independent companies with more than 7,000 employees and revenue of $1.75 billion. Its strategy is to buy and hold companies in growth industries, taking a long view to investing, the biography states.

At least two insurance companies under the Eli Global umbrella are regulated by the North Carolina Department of Insurance, department general counsel John Hoomani said. Lindberg's first foray as a donor in state political races appears to have coincided with the 2016 insurance commissioner's race.

He gave Goodwin's re-election campaign nearly $10,000 that year and put another $350,000 into the N.C. Opportunity Committee. Months after Republican Mike Causey won the race and became North Carolina's insurance commissioner, Lindberg sent his campaign $5,000.

Causey said Tuesday that he returned the money "out of an abundance of caution" since his department regulates some of Lindberg's companies. Causey also said that he's met Lindberg, who has visited his office on regulatory issues, but he doesn't know him personally.

Goodwin, through the Democratic Party spokesman, said he met Lindberg at a fundraiser during the 2016 election cycle and that he doesn't know anything about the N.C. Opportunity Committee.

That PAC still exists, and Lindberg put another $100,000 into it last October. All of its spending went to campaign consultants, accountants and attorneys, making it hard to divine the group's current purpose. Organizers listed on PAC paperwork either didn't return WRAL News messages or, in the case of treasurer John Palermo, declined to comment.

Causey said he was unaware of Lindberg's $1.4 million donation to the Republican Council of State Committee, which functions much like a state political party account and can accept unlimited contributions from individuals.

Regular candidate campaigns can collect only $5,200 from a donor per election in North Carolina.

The fund is named for the Council of State, North Carolina's collection of executive branch officials who are elected statewide, but only Forest and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Mark Johnson appear to be involved. The other four Republican Council of State members, including Causey, said they opted out of fundraising through the committee, which was created last year and authorized under a 2015 change to the state's campaign finance laws

Forest chairs the committee, and his campaign put out a release late last week taking credit for its fundraising. Johnson is on the group's budget committee but "has not been an active participant on the fundraising side," according to Jonathan Felts, a political consultant Johnson deferred to when WRAL News asked him in person about the group's structure.

Felts said he wasn't 100 percent sure how spending decisions will be made within the group.

The group's treasurer has been Judy Lewis, who gave "judy@danforest.com" as her email address on at least one state filing. She didn't return WRAL News messages, and Forest's campaign spokesman, Hal Weatherman, who is also chief of staff in the Lieutenant Governor's Office, refused to answer questions about Lindberg or the fundraising committee

"The Republican Council of State Committee is an affiliated party committee similar in structure to the Republican and Democrat state party committees, none of which is required to disclose its internal processes to the members of the press," Weatherman said in an email.

Lindberg's fingerprints can be found on at least one more quasi-political entity: the North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus Foundation.

He's pledged $20,000 a year in scholarships for students at historically black colleges through the group, foundation Chairman Larry Hall confirmed.

Hall, a former state legislator and Gov. Roy Cooper's secretary of military and veteran's affairs, said he remembers meeting Lindberg perhaps once but doesn't know him well.

Told of Lindberg's recent political giving, Hall quipped that "maybe we should give him an opportunity to contribute more."