The Dive: Pay To Win

If you think New Hanover County is an expensive place to live, try running for office. 

Since I first moved to Wilmington over two decades ago, state and local races have been raising more money, and earlier. Back in 2008, StarNews reported that Democrat Julia Boseman—then running for her third term in the state senate—was “flexing the power of incumbency,” raising $61,000 in the second quarter of campaign finance reporting for the year. Her challenger, Republican Michael Lee, raised just shy of $19,000 during the same period.

Flash forward to today and Lee—now a four-term incumbent—has raised 18 times as much in his latest second-quarter funding round. Lee’s campaign coffers top $800,000 so far this cycle, and his challenger, Democrat David Hill, has raised about $375,000.

On top of that, the North Carolina Republican Senate Caucus is sponsoring a $2.28 million television campaign on Lee’s behalf. The blitz is part of a planned $10 million in spending on three of the most competitive state senate seats, according to Axios. It’s hard to imagine the state Democratic party won’t try to answer with its own funding.

New Hanover is a purple county in a purple state, which makes District 7 a biennial bare-knuckle fight. The district has gone back and forth between Democrats and the GOP for decades. Lee’s four-term run was interrupted in 2018 when he lost by just 231 votes to former Wilmington Mayor Harper Peterson. Lee might have been hurt by last-minute allegations of influence peddling as a development attorney—but he was able to retake the seat in 2020 and hold it in 2022.

The district, which has long been creatively gerrymandered to benefit one party or the other, saw a conspicuous carve-out in 2022. The new map shifted a swath of Democratic-leaning voters in downtown Wilmington from District 7 to heavily Republican Senate District 8, which includes Columbus and Brunswick counties (where Democratic votes would be a drop in the bucket). 

That set up the 2022 election, which was costly, tough, and dirty. Democratic challenger Marcia Morgan started at a disadvantage as a mid-campaign replacement for Jason Minnicozzi, who dropped out while facing sexual harassment allegations. The state Democratic party seemed to believe the allegations, but Minnicozzi publicly blamed fundraising issues.

But, Minnicozzi’s campaign finances aside, fundraising was ostensibly not a problem in the race. Morgan and Lee’s campaigns raised more than $3 million collectively, not including outside money from other political groups. The pace of spending was furious: Morgan’s campaign was at one point reportedly burning through roughly $200,000 a week on television ads. 

Some of those ads failed to clear the already low bar for political advertising, and she ended up in court with Lee over defamation charges. Almost a year after the election, Morgan agreed to a private settlement that reportedly covered Lee’s legal fees. Publicly, Morgan implied the “guidance” of the NC Senate Democratic Caucus was to blame, and admitted her campaign allegations, which attempted to resurrect concerns from 2018, were “not based in actual fact.” 

This year, the campaign price tag is on track to be even higher, and the district’s carve-out is deeper–it’s been nicknamed “the notch.” The stakes are still high, with the Republican’s veto-proof majority on the line and the Democrats eager for a Senate win. 

But, so far, Lee and Hill aren’t hitting below the belt. Both candidates said they just wanted to get accurate information about their policies to voters.

Hill’s first campaign ad introduces him—a pediatrician and family man—and his go-to issues, protecting voters’ “right to abortion and access to birth control” and kids “from harmful pollutants.” Lee, who needs less of an introduction, also spends a lot of time on pollution, discussing at length his work on PFAS-related legislation. While Lee addressed the abortion issue directly in 2022, he hasn’t touched it much this year.

I’ve seen my share of candidates renege on pledges not to “go negative,” and there’s still plenty of time for things to get nasty. Then again, the candidates could stick to the high road—to the issues, and the facts—and let the voters decide. 

But, either way, it won’t be cheap.

–Benjamin Schachtman

Catch up on an audio conversation on last week’s edition of The Dive here, or contact us with story ideas and feedback at johanna@theassemblync.com.

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Facts v. Truth

Below is an adapted excerpt from John Railey’s new book Murder in Manteo: Seeking Justice for Stacey Stanton.

In 1992, I was the special projects reporter for The High Point Enterprise newspaper. I needed money following a divorce, so I wrote articles for true-crime magazines in my off hours. One of those stories was about the case of Clifton Eugene Spencer, convicted in January 1991 of fatally stabbing 28-year-old Stacey Stanton and of slashing her right breast and vagina on February 3, 1990.

Stanton was killed in Manteo, in Dare County, where I have spent much of my life. I thought I could trust the law enforcement officers there.

The true-crime magazines, also called “detective magazines,” were pro-law enforcement. They didn’t encourage their writers to reach out to defendants and their lawyers for their side. Reaching out to all sides was a basic practice in my newspaper work. But for the magazines I went by their standard, basing my Stanton article on interviews with investigators and newspaper clippings.

I wrote the story and mailed it in. The magazine published the story a few months later, giving it sensational play on the cover, with a photo of a scantily clad blonde model and a headline of “Savage Slayer Slashed Stacey’s Breast.” I cringed at the cover.

My byline on the magazine story was a pseudonym, as was the norm for those stories by me and many other writers. I was comfortable with that because I never asked my newspaper bosses whether I could freelance for detective magazines, realizing they’d probably tell me no. 

In doing so, I was carrying on a long tradition in journalism: Instead of asking for permission, it’s better just to do it and beg for forgiveness later, if needed. I remain comfortable with that tradition. The rest, not so much.

Because, unfortunately for Spencer, I wasn’t the only person who went for the convenient truth. We journalists make mistakes, and most of us try to correct them. But when mistakes by police officers, lawyers, and judges go uncorrected, they expose people of limited resources like Spencer to execution or long prison sentences.

Confessions of a Journalist

Three decades ago, I wrote a factually correct article that failed to convey the greater truth about who committed a sensational murder. I wasn’t the only person who conformed to the prosecution’s faulty narrative.

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Around the Region

Not Enough Beds: For the second year in a row, UNCW is set to welcome more students than it can accommodate on campus, Port City Daily reports.

Swamp Womp: Gov. Roy Cooper stopped by the Green Swamp Preserve to highlight a federal grant, his first appearance since announcing he wouldn’t be Kamala Harris’s VP, WHQR reports.

Clearcutting Conversation: Brunswick County staff hosted a private meeting with various development stakeholders to deliberate new land-use rules, frustrating members of the public who wanted to be included, Port City Daily reports.

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Around the State

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