By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
Staff Writer
Editor’s note: This is the ninth installment in an occasional series on campaign finance.
Five statewide judicial candidates have qualified for grants from the North Carolina Public Campaign Fund, which means that most of those office-seekers’ campaign money will originate with a public source.
The candidates sought those funds voluntarily and were not required to go after public cash as part of their campaigns.
N.C. Supreme Court candidates Robert Hunter and Barbara Jackson, both of Raleigh, met the criteria to receive $240,100 each to help fund their campaigns, according to an official with the State Board of Elections.
N.C. Court of Appeals candidates Jane Gray of Raleigh, Ann Marie Calabria of Morrisville and Martha Geer of Raleigh crossed a threshold in order to get $164,400 each, related Frances Camara, government account auditor with the Board of Elections.
To qualify for public funding, each candidate had to collect cash within a certain range of dollar figures from a minimum of 350 registered voters in the state.
To meet the standard, the Supreme Court candidates were tasked with taking in at least $41,160 each up to a maximum of $82,320 each.
The Court of Appeals hopefuls were charged with raising at least $39,450 each to a maximum of $78,900 each.
This year, all of North Carolina’s statewide judicial candidates running ahead of the May 4 primary election filed for public financing, but three of them didn’t meet the roughly 6-year-old program’s prerequisites.
Two of the nonqualifying candidates, Steven Walker and Rick Elmore, both of Raleigh, were nominated to run against one another for a Court of Appeals seat.
Another of the three, Dean Poirier of Mount Olive, didn’t have to participate in the primary and advanced automatically to run against Geer.
This means that two candidates — Elmore and Walker — who did not qualify for public financing are pitted against each other, while Poirier is running against a candidate who met the qualifications.
The Public Campaign Fund has been lauded by groups like Democracy North Carolina, which advocates for a more open and inclusive elections process.
The question of whether elections that have public-financing components are serving their purpose was met with an unqualified “yes” by Shaunee Morgan, an eastern field organizer with Democracy North Carolina.
“They’re serving their purpose in terms of breaking ties between special interest and the judicial candidates,” Morgan said. “The problem before was that these judges had to run with money from lawyers’ associations and all these groups that would eventually go before them. If there’s not an outright abuse of power, there’s some kind of conflict of interest there.”
One component of the public-financing program is a voter guide mailed to registered voters by the State Board of Elections.
According to the guide, six revenue sources fund the public-financing program, including a mandatory surcharge to attorneys paying for their privilege licenses and voluntary donations by taxpayers who check off a $3 contribution box on their state income-tax forms.
Tom Payne, chairman of the Beaufort County Board of Elections, wondered aloud how aware most people are when it comes to public-financing options for statewide judicial races.
Yet, Payne was certain that much of the public was aware of the voter guide, which is mailed directly to voters’ homes.
“I’ve heard a lot of positive feedback about the brochure they print from the electorate,” he said. “I think that’s wonderful.”
The guide, which contains information about the judicial candidates, “gives each candidate a fair footing to put their platform out,” Payne said, adding that he’s heard some voters say they based their ballot decisions on what they read in the guide.