On Oct. 1, Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby said that he had launched a criminal inquiry of the reporting of flights by the 2008 gubernatorial campaign of Bev Perdue. One week earlier, Willoughby asked the State Bureau of Investigation to look into the flights.
The State Board of Elections assessed a $30,000 fine to the Bev Perdue committee Aug. 24 for several dozen flights that were improperly reported.
The SBI confirmed the probe Oct. 1, the day after Carolina Journal reported on a convoluted method of transporting then-Lt. Gov. Perdue by air to campaign and political events. The story relied on documents obtained by State Board of Elections investigator Kim Strach and interviews with persons identified in those documents.
A June 25 report prepared by Strach noted that the Perdue Committee had set up a plan to obtain “aircraft providers” — rather than licensed charter services — to arrange flights for Perdue.
The portion of the report dealing with Perdue’s flights is available here (PDF download).
A footnote on page 5 of the report noted that according to Raleigh attorney Gardner Payne, a fundraising volunteer for the campaign, “Perdue advised him in 2006 that Peter Reichard was working with Buzzy Stubbs to obtain aircraft providers for the Perdue Committee flights.” Reichard was the campaign’s finance director. Trawick “Buzzy” Stubbs, a New Bern attorney, was a law partner of Perdue’s late former husband.
A supplemental report prepared by Strach and presented to the board a few days before its Aug. 24 meeting in Asheville provided additional details about one of those flights.
It introduced some details of a Dec. 8, 2007, flight taking Perdue from Chapel Hill to Manteo arranged by maxed-out donor Charles “Mike” Fulenwider. The flight originated in Hickory, went to Chapel Hill and Manteo, and then retraced its path. The portion of the report dealing with the Fulenwider flight is available here (PDF download; see “Other Issues”).
The flight, booked with Profile Aviation in Hickory, initially was billed to Fulenwider Enterprises, the company Mike Fulenwider owns. But on the invoice, Fulenwider Enterprises is crossed out and instead the billing address is handwritten as “Perdue for Governor” with a Morganton Post Office box, identified by Strach’s report as one rented by Fulenwider. (Download a PDF version of the invoice here.)
The flight was reported as an in-kind contribution from James Fleming, a Morganton barber. Read the donation form recorded for Fleming here (PDF). The form was completed and signed by Tate Johnson, a campaign staff worker who now runs Perdue’s Eastern Governor’s Office in New Bern. He’s also a Democratic candidate for the Lenoir County Commission.
Fleming told elections board investigator Cheryll Harris he wrote a check to the Perdue campaign but did not pay for air travel. He has been unable to produce a copy of his canceled check.
In September interviews with CJ, Fleming said he had paid for a campaign visit Perdue made to Morganton on a Wednesday; Dec. 8, 2007, fell on a Saturday. He also said he had not found evidence of his payment and would not continue to look for any. “As far as I know that case was settled when she [Perdue] paid off that money, so I am through with it,” he said.