Does it pay to be outrageous? NC candidates’ campaign reports suggest answers
Bo Hines, the 26-year-old endorsed by former President Donald Trump who is running against seven other Republicans in North Carolina’s most competitive congressional district, raised less money than two other candidates during the first three months of this year, campaign finance reports show.
The deadline was Friday for candidates seeking federal office to submit reports to the Federal Election Commission declaring how much they had received in contributions, how much they had spent, and how much money they had left to spend by the end of the first quarter.
According to his FEC report, Hines raised $119,000 during the first quarter of 2022. Of the more than 80 contributions Hines’ campaign itemized, which requires disclosing the name and address of individual donors, only six came from people who live in North Carolina, and none came from within the 13th Congressional District Hines is running in, which covers southern Wake County, all of Johnston County, and parts of Harnett and Wayne counties.
Kelly Daughtry, an attorney from Smithfield who is self-funding much of her campaign, raised the most among GOP candidates running in the 13th district. Between Jan. 1 and March 31, Daughtry received $266,000 from individual donors and political action committees.
Businessman and combat veteran Kent Keirsey, who was endorsed last week by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, raised $204,000.
Contributions from individual donors and PACs aren’t the only source of funds that a campaign can use. Candidates can lend money to their campaigns, and each of the top two fundraisers on the Republican side did that in the first quarter.
Daughtry lent her campaign $2 million, while Keirsey lent his campaign $50,000.
After expenditures, Daughtry had $1.16 million cash on hand at the end of the quarter, and Keirsey had nearly $479,000.
And while Hines didn’t lend himself money this quarter, he finished March with about $189,000 to spend. Hines has support from the Club for Growth, a conservative PAC aligned with Trump that recently committed to spending $1.25 million on political ads for Hines through the primary, which is on May 17.
The ads, which will air on TV, radio and the internet, remind voters that Hines has the backing of Trump. Last weekend, when Trump visited Selma, a small town in Johnston County that falls within the 13th District, Hines was one of a handful of Trump-endorsed candidates who joined the former president at his rally.
The lack of itemized contributions Hines reported from within the state, and the absence of any from within the 13th District, comes after some Republicans in Johnston County raised concerns about his lack of connections to the area.
Linwood Parker, a former mayor of Four Oaks who has been active in Johnston County GOP politics for several years, told The News & Observer earlier this month that Hines has spent too little time in the county to understand its communities and adequately represent its residents in Congress. Ahead of Trump’s visit last weekend, the Johnston County Men’s Republican Organization, which Parker runs, ran ads in local newspapers saying it couldn’t support “a candidate from Western N.C. for our congressman.”
Hines most recently lived in Winston-Salem. Rob Burgess, a spokesman for Hines, told the N&O earlier this month that Hines was moving to Fuquay-Varina, which is in the 13th District. Burgess previously pointed to the time Hines spent living in Wake County while attending N.C. State University, when asked about his ties to the district.
As for the lack of itemized contributions to Hines from North Carolina, Burgess referred to a statement he gave to WRAL. Burgess told the station that Hines has “a very aggressive small-dollar program,” and said a lot of support for Hines within the 13th District comes in contributions that are too small to report individually.
Contributions don’t need to be itemized if they don’t exceed $200 over the course of an election cycle, according to the FEC.
Among the other GOP candidates, former Pastor Chad Slotta raised $49,000 and lent his campaign $110,000, ending the quarter with $335,000 cash on hand; DeVan Barbour, the head of an employee insurance benefits firm, raised $79,000 and had $176,000 left.
Former U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers, who served three terms in Congress, reported $10,000 in contributions and $15,000 left to spend.
On the Democratic side, state Sen. Wiley Nickel reported raising $162,000 and lent his campaign $750,000, ending the quarter with a little over $1 million on hand. Former state Sen. Sam Searcy raised $45,000 and lent his campaign $200,000, finishing the quarter with more than $227,000 available.
Allam, Foushee and Aiken in NC-04
The race to replace retiring Democratic Rep. David Price, in a district mostly consisting of Durham and Chapel Hill, appears to be narrowing to a few top contenders.
Two are women of color: Valerie Foushee, a state senator for Orange and Chatham counties who is Black, and Nida Allam, a Durham County commissioner who is the daughter of Indian and Pakistani immigrants.
North Carolina has never had more than two non-white members of Congress at any given time, but if either Foushee or Allam were to win the 4th district primary, there could be three — and maybe four, depending on what happens in the U.S. Senate race to replace Richard Burr. Of the state’s current 15 members of Congress there are four women and 11 men, and two Black representatives, making the delegation significantly less diverse than the state population in general.
Another contender in the 4th District primary, American Idol star and Raleigh native Clay Aiken, is a white man, but could add diversity of a different kind: The News & Observer previously reported that Aiken would be the first openly gay person from any Southern state ever elected to Congress, if he wins.
Recent fundraising reports in the eight-way primary show that Allam, Foushee and Aiken appear to be the clear frontrunners.
Allam went into April with the most cash on hand. She had $483,000 to spend as of April 1, FEC reports show, having raised $366,000 in the first quarter. Aiken had the second-most in the bank with $334,000, after raising $444,000. Foushee had $263,000 to spend after raising $317,000 in the quarter.
In a distant fourth-place tie are candidates Ashley Ward and Stephen Valentine, who records show both had $32,000 heading into April. Crystal Cavalier had $15,000 in the bank, Richard Watkins had $3,000 and Matt Grooms had $568.
Aiken’s celebrity status made the 43-year-old the most well-known candidate in the race the moment he entered.
Endorsements for Foushee and Allam have drawn more attention to them and brought the race’s political divisions into focus.
Foushee, 65, is the establishment candidate. She was endorsed by Attorney General Josh Stein as well as U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield of Wilson, the former head of the Congressional Black Caucus. Both of Durham’s state senators, Mike Woodard and Natalie Murdock, endorsed her as did Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger and other local government and law enforcement leaders.
Allam, 28, is the progressive candidate. She doesn’t have as many local endorsements as Foushee, but she has more from current members of Congress. Former U.S. presidential candidate and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently endorsed Allam, as did other progressive figures including Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Cawthorn trailing in NC-11?
In the state’s far-western 11th district, incumbent Rep. Madison Cawthorn is facing some stronger-than-expected challenges from fellow Republicans.
They’ve been aided by some of Cawthorn’s own stumbles in recent months. He publicly toyed with the idea of leaving to run in a different district, then called popular Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “thug” and seemed to defend Russia invading Ukraine for “pushing woke ideologies.”
He then went on a podcast and gossiped about orgies and drug use in Washington involving other Republicans — comments that he later walked back under pressure from congressional leaders but that caused multiple prominent Republicans including Sen. Thom Tillis to formally endorse Cawthorn opponent Chuck Edwards.
And heading into April it was Edwards, not Cawthorn, who had the most money to spend with the primary just six weeks away.
Edwards, a state senator and McDonald’s franchisee from Hendersonville, reported $391,000 cash on hand. After Edwards with $288,000 cash on hand was Bruce O’Connell, owner of the popular Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Cawthorn was in third place heading into April, with $242,000 cash on hand.
That doesn’t tell the entire story, though. The main reason Cawthorn has relatively little in the bank is that he has been on a massive political spending spree as he fights off the challengers. No one else has even come close to him on spending, FEC reports show.
Cawthorn raised and spent more than the rest of the GOP field combined. His challengers include not just Edwards and O’Connell but also Wendy Nevarez, Michelle Woodhouse, Matthew Burrill, Rod Honeycutt and Kristie Sluder.
In the first three months of 2022 Cawthorn raised $643,000 — more than twice Edwards’ $310,000. So while Edwards has more cash on hand, it’s because Cawthorn’s campaign spent $684,000 from January through March, and Edwards spent just $248,000.
Meanwhile, nearly all of O’Connell’s fundraising has been in the form of a loan he personally gave his campaign. He brought in less than $5,000 in donations from others from January to March, FEC records show. Similarly, while his campaign spent more than $800,000 during that time, almost all of it was to repay himself part of his loan. Only $63,000 was spent on campaigning.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at https://campsite.bio/underthedome or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published April 16, 2022 at 6:39 PM with the headline "Does it pay to be outrageous? NC candidates’ campaign reports suggest answers."
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly described total fundraising and spending numbers for 11th Congressional District candidates as the numbers from the most recent quarter alone. The story has been updated with the figures for the most recent quarter.
