In her regular appearance on North Carolina Public Radio WUNC with host Jeff Tiberii, JLF’s Becki Gray and fellow guest Rob Schofield from the N.C. Justice Center discussed the Iowa caucus errors and North Carolina campaign finance.
On the Iowa situation, Gray stated:
Iowa set a new standard for how not to do elections… I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I am willing to bet we will not have a situation like there was in Iowa.
North Carolina will do it better.
Host Jeff Tiberii noted that, in North Carolina, the Democratic Party raised more than double the state Republican Party for the second half of 2019. He also noted that Gov. Roy Cooper has raised nearly three times as much as challenger Dan Forest. Tiberii asked Gray and Schofield what they took away from those numbers.
Gray said:
The Republican leadership in the General Assembly is raising a lot of money, and the Democratic party is raising a lot of money for the party.
The Republican Party does not raise as much money as the Democratic Party to then give to the legislative candidates. Instead, individual Republican candidates raise more money than the party. It is just a difference in structure.
Schofield replied:
It’s kind of depressing. The notion that a couple of men [Phil Berger and Tim Moore] who have worked their way up through the bureaucracy of the legislature and ensconced themselves in power [get to] raise oodles of money that they then dole out to pick the people that they want to be in the legislature with them…
It is a sad commentary on the way our politics are now being driven by big dollars… Our democracy has been perverted and purchased.
Gray replied:
There is nothing new to see here. Republicans raise money to get Republicans elected, and Democrats raise money to get Democrats elected.
Listen to the full episode of WUNC’s Politics podcast here. Follow Becki Gray on twitter: @beckigray.
