The following editorial appeared in the April 2012 print edition of Carolina Journal.
Gov. Bev Perdue’s longtime friend Trawick “Buzzy” Stubbs is trying to stay out of jail and keep his law license. In doing so, he has given state investigators looking at the inner workings of Perdue’s 2008 campaign plenty of ammunition if they seek to train their sights on campaign officials and state employees who worked for Perdue at the time, if not the governor herself.
The New Bern attorney and law partner of Perdue’s late first husband does not deny arranging flights for the campaign of then-Lt. Gov. Perdue that were valued far above the legal limit for contributions. Instead, he says he notified the campaign and Perdue’s office about the flights when they happened and that campaign officials should have figured out how to account for them.
Stubbs arranged $28,498 in flights for the Perdue campaign. Individual donors can contribute no more than $8,000 to a candidate during a primary and general election cycle.
The Perdue committee was fined $30,000 in August 2010 by the State Board of Elections for more than 40 flights from donors that were not reported in a timely manner. Earlier this year Stubbs, along with two other Perdue campaign officials or fundraisers, were charged in a state investigation of the campaign. Former campaign finance director Peter Reichard took a felony plea in February.
Stubbs presented extensive details of the flights in a March 7 motion to dismiss his two felony charges. The filing suggests the creation of an elaborate scheme by officials with the campaign and the lieutenant governor’s office to let donors who had given the maximum amount evade campaign laws and make additional illegal contributions.
In a report prepared for the elections board’s probe of Perdue’s campaign, investigator Kim Strach said that in 2006, Stubbs had worked with Reichard to assemble a list of “aircraft providers for Perdue committee flights.”
Stubbs’ motion offers thorough details on nine flights he arranged between January 2007 and September 2008. The campaign did not account for the flights before May 2009, after Perdue became governor.
In each instance, Reichard asked Stubbs to arrange a flight for Perdue. Stubbs would book the flight and someone from his law office would email the time of the flight, the name of the pilot, and the type of plane, and the tail number of the aircraft to Reichard or a member of the lieutenant governor’s staff. The campaign took this information and estimated a cost, using the website planequest.com as a reference.
This arrangement — the purchaser sets his own price and doesn’t pay up front — was not unlike the deal former Gov. Mike Easley got from Fayetteville auto dealer Bobby Bleeker, who let the governor’s family keep a GMC Yukon for six years and pay for it when they turned it in.
Stubbs’ motion says “at least nine individuals associated with the lieutenant governor’s office and the campaign were aware of Stubbs’ flights. …” Let’s hope we eventually hear from them, in a courtroom, under oath.