In Outing a Bribery Scheme, Mike Causey Is a Credit to His Office

Read WRAL reporter Travis Fain's wrap-up of the Greg Lindberg bribery case down in Durham. Read it and weep. Because billionaire Greg Lindberg is one of those "masters of the universe" who are single-handedly capable of shoving enough money at politicians to cast an ethical cloud over whole departments of government. For those public officials who accepted great heaps of his cash, they raise suspicions about personal integrity and suggest once again that the love/lure of money is the root of all evil.

Lindberg gave money to both the Republican and the Democratic parties. He gave money to Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer as well as to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. He gave 6 figures to Tim Moore, for his House Republican Caucus fund. He gave $50,000 to state Senator Wesley Meredith who was introducing an insurance law rewrite in the General Assembly that would have advantaged Lindberg (the law went nowhere). Most striking of all, Lindberg gave over $2 million to support Dan Forest for governor, a "strategic" expenditure in case Forest should become governor.

Lindberg isn't the first nor will he be the last, to grow his tendrils everywhere, from Raleigh power-centers to Mugstomp-on-the-Potomac. We've always had these guys who respect no bounds to get what they want. And elected officials with their hands out.

Except for NC Commissioner of Insurance Mike Causey. (You can read about what Lindberg wanted out of the Insurance Commissioner on your own. I'm not going to summarize all that here. It's beside the point anyway.) Mike Causey, Republican, cooperated with the FBI to expose a bribery scandal involving both billionaire Lindberg and Robin Hayes, Chair of the NCGOP. Mike Causey resisted the attempted bribery and exposed it all. Mike Causey is a civic hero.

Travis Fain found evidence that the Lindberg gang thought Commissioner Causey was also "dense," a kind of Gomer Pyle lame-brain. That Causey always seemed to agree to their quid pro quos and then dragged his feet and appeared to forget his assigned duties and never delivered what Lindberg thought he'd agreed to. All the time Causey was playing Lindberg, wearing at various times both hidden microphones and videocameras and gathering the evidence that led to Lindberg's conviction last Thursday (March 5). Robin Hayes had already pled guilty for participating and is awaiting sentencing.

Some North Carolina Democrats get tarred with the same Lindberg tar. Nobody's accused them of wrongdoing, but it's not a good look. What's documented is some $750,000 that Lindberg gave to the NC Democratic Party in 2018 while it was chaired by Wayne Goodwin, the previous Insurance Commissioner. In fact, according to Fain, Goodwin was Lindberg's "first." Lindberg had spent "more than $340,000 between Goodwin's campaign [to become Insurance Commissioner] and a separate political action committee that supported his re-election."

That's what Fain documents. What's undocumented is the money Lindberg gave to "dark money" groups, of which there was apparently a generous helping given to both sides. Including an unspecified amount to a 501(c)(4) group supporting Gov. Cooper's 2016 campaign.

What set off the whole bribery scene?

Goodwin had given the Lindberg insurance companies an advantage that appears to have been out of the ordinary. Causey's department after January of 2017 began reversing that policy. Lindberg was putting pressure on Causey to go easy on him.

Under Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin, the department allowed Lindberg's insurance companies to keep investing up to 40% of their assets, cash from policyholder premiums, into other companies that Lindberg owns. When Mike Causey took over as Insurance Commissioner, his team, led in part by Jackie Obusek, a senior deputy commissioner, insisted on "unwinding" what Goodwin had given Lindberg -- lowering that 40% and thus Lindberg's control over the companies' cash.

Lindberg wanted Jackie Obusek fired. That's what he was willing to buy from Mike Causey, along with of course a more generally lenient regulatory regime overseeing his activities.

Government Employee of the Year

North Carolina's Commissioner of Insurance Mike Causey might just be a candidate for poster child of the year, something titled "Incorruptible Public Official."

As more information comes out about the indictment of big-bucks donor Greg Lindberg and his facilitator, Robin Hayes, Chair of the NCGOP, Causey emerges as a rock-solid honest man. Here's a relevant passage from the reporting by Paul A. Specht et al. published yesterday morning:

Causey said his involvement with Lindberg began in 2017 when the insurance department was conducting a routine financial examination of one of Lindberg’s companies.... 

“There were questions on some of the financials,” Causey said. 

Lindberg, fast on his way to becoming one of the largest campaign donors in the state, donated $10,000 to Causey’s campaign in early 2017. Causey said the donation came “out of the blue,” but he directed his campaign finance director to return the money. 

“It might not look right,” he said.

Later that year, Causey said he was told that Lindberg wanted to host a fundraiser for him. Causey declined. 

“We were still engaged in the ongoing financial examination,” Causey said. “And it just didn’t look right.” 

By then, he said, officials at the department had questions about the practices and financial health of Lindberg’s companies.

“There were loopholes being exploited,” Causey said.

Lindberg was throwing around the money, especially to Republicans (but why not? They were in charge of most everything) but also to prominent Democrats like Wayne Goodwin, who might want about now to be giving that money back.

Congratulations, Wayne Goodwin!

After a successful first term as chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, Wayne Goodwin was reelected yesterday by the NC Democratic Executive Committee for another term.

"Over his first term, Chairman Goodwin oversaw a historic partnership with Governor Cooper that recruited quality, diverse candidates in all 170 legislative districts for the first time ever; achieved record fundraising success; and launched a groundbreaking statewide organizing program. As a result, North Carolina Democrats swept statewide judicial contests, including electing a new Supreme Court justice, and broke both legislative supermajorities.

"In addition, Chairman Goodwin spearheaded a rural listening tour to reach out and hear from rural North Carolina communities, and oversaw investments in local and municipal races that flipped 22 Republican-held seats and helped elect new African-American Democratic mayors, including the first female African-American mayor of Charlotte."

Federal Judge Overturns Latest Republican Attempt to Monkey With the Judiciary

U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles issued an order on Wednesday reinstating primary elections for state-wide judgeships, which applies to one Supreme Court open seat and three Court of Appeals seats in 2018. Judge Eagles' order did not apply to district court and superior court races.

"Make no mistake," NC Democratic Party Chair Wayne Goodwin said in a statement, "this is a major voting rights victory, yet another setback for Republicans’ efforts to rig our judiciary, and is the third time this month alone the courts have shot down Republicans’ attempts to rig our elections." 

Hilariously, Rep. David Lewis, a Harnett County Republican, and Sen. Ralph Hise, a Mitchell County Republican, criticized the decision as “partisan.” Those guys just don't get irony at all.

Anne Blythe provides a thumbnail history of the ways in which the Republican General Assembly has attempted to shape the courts for their partisan ambitions:

Since Republicans gained control of the General Assembly in 2010, lawmakers have tried to make many changes to the courts, which weigh the constitutionality of their laws. They have done away with public financing of campaigns, reinstated partisan races at a time when many states are moving away from them and decreased the size of the state appeals court shortly after Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who appoints judges to vacancies on the bench, defeated Gov. Pat McCrory.

In 2015, the year before Republican Bob Edmunds’ term on the state Supreme Court expired, Republican lawmakers tried to change how sitting judges stood for re-election. A Superior Court judge panel found the law, which would have shielded sitting justices from opposition on the ballot unless they lost a “retention election,” to be a violation of the state Constitution. Because the Supreme Court split 3-3 on the question, with Edmunds abstaining, the lower court ruling forced a competitive race in 2016.

That year, Democrat Mike Morgan defeated Edmunds.

The Foot Fist Way

NC Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin posted last night about "the skullduggery" practiced by "one powerful state senator" in slipping into the Senate budget bill a provision that would have essentially relieved the Insurance Commissioner of his power to control and cap insurance rates.

The "powerful state senator" Goodwin was referring to was Marc Basnight, the Democratic leader of the NC Senate.

North Carolina Public Radio got on the story Wednesday, before anyone knew it was Basnight who slipped in the shiv:

Stripping an elected official of his power would be a major policy change, the kind of thing you might expect Senate budget writers to notice. They didn't.

Senator Katie Dorsett co-chairs the subcommittee that wrote that section of the budget. 'I do not know where it originated. It came to our committee. We included it. And I was not aware of it.' "

Later on Wednesday, Basnight owned up that he put the provision in the bill, but he indicated that it was a mistake, an inadvertent error, one of those missteps that become a misstep when someone notices it.

That, folks, is the arrogance of one powerful state senator.