RALEIGH – Thomas Wright is a longtime Democratic state representative from Wilmington. He was a close ally of Jim Black, formerly of the State House, soon to be of the Big House. While the symbol of Black’s corruption has come to be the image of him offering a bribe at the IHOP for a Republican lawmaker to flip-flop, Wright’s impending fall from grace might well come to be symbolized by the allegation, revealed Tuesday during a state board of elections hearing, that Wright used campaign funds to pay about $550 in bills from Victoria’s Secret.
I hereby swear not to make any cracks about undercover investigations, strange political bedfellows, or airing dirty linens in public. I will not speculate about what still remains under wraps. I will not urge legislative panels or prosecutors to get to the bottom of this. Just not going to do it.
Rep. Wright’s behavior revealed his firm support – okay, now, self, you stop that! – for the concept that “campaign spending” encompasses a wide variety of things. In total, said elections-board investigator Kim Strach, Wright spent as much as $220,000 of campaign funds for his personal use during the past six years. While state law allowed such conversions until October 2006, the expenditures were always required to be disclosed. According to Strach, Wright didn’t disclose them.
Furthermore, he took in roughly the same amount of campaign cash – $220,000 – without reporting it on his campaign-finance forms, the investigator testified. That would be a crime. And Wright appears to have carried out a scheme to use false statements and documents to obtain a bank loan to purchase a building for a state-funded foundation he ran in Wilmington.
Perhaps wisely, Wright took the Fifth at the elections-board hearing. Speaking of wisdom, new House Speaker Joe Hackney (D-Orange) didn’t simply emit the usual smokescreen of phrases about “presumption of innocence” and “letting the process play out.” While not going as far as I would have like, Hackney indicated that Wright’s ability to serve as a House member in good standing was in great peril. “Unless Representative Wright has some satisfactory explanation, which he certainly did not do today,” the speaker told reporters, “he can certainly no longer be effective here.”
Some are already calling for Wright to resign, or for the House to begin the process of removing him from his legislative seat. You don’t have to be criminally liable to be guilty of gross malfeasance, dishonesty, and abuse of the public trust – which are ample reasons not to remain in office. Perhaps Wright may at some point offer an explanation for his campaign reporting and behavior that is not attached to a felony plea-bargain, but it is unlikely to lift up – err, sorry – either his ethics or his competence.
Politically, the details of Wright’s wrongs couldn’t have come at a worse time. Hackney and his allies in the House are in the midst of trying to distance themselves from years of misrule by Jim Black’s corrupt political machine. They’ve made some progress so far this session, by improving the House rules and expressing support for additional reforms. But the Wright affair seems to be worse in its particulars than anyone thought. And the bad news isn’t over yet, with the upcoming sentencing of Jim Black and expected elections-board hearings on allegations of campaign-finance irregularities by Rep. Mary McAllister (D-Cumberland).
Will Wright resign to spare his fellow Democrats further embarrassment? So far, he’s denying that possibility emphatically. But I expect Democrats in his district and beyond to get real vocal real quick about his inability to represent his constituents effectively in Raleigh, and the damage he’ll continue to do to his party and the institution of the General Assembly. Joe Sinsheimer, the former Democratic political consultant whose careful spadework helped propel the initial investigations into both Black and Wright, said Wright’s continued service in the House would constitute “a further insult to the people of North Carolina.” Wright’s lawyer is probably also encouraging him to step aside, so as to focus on his defense in a criminal proceeding and to reduce the risk that he’ll end up making public statements that will hurt his case.
This latest scandal in state government certainly has legs. I’ll make every effort to keep readers abreast of the latest developments.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.
Update: One reader pointed out this morning that my summary of the allegations against Wright might be a bit too brief, letting some of the details slip by. I apologize for the sheer oversight.