#ncga: When all else fails, throw your campaign treasurer under the bus

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SPEAKERMOOREPORTRAITWe reported yesterday on the heat House speaker Tim Moore is getting from a driveby TV station in his home turf.  We saw video from said driveby TV program which featured Moore whipping out the old liberal bias card.  The problem?  As our friends at The Carolina Plotthound discovered, the reporter giving Moore so much grief was once the president of the Elon University College Republicans.    As I remind many critics of this site — criticism of politicians identifying as Republican does not necessarily lessen or tarnish the critic’s conservative credentials. Good tough questions are what these people need to be subjected to. 

Well, it appears Moore’s special driveby *friend* was back in action last night.  He is still scrutinizing Moore’s campaign records.  Some new things we learned from his reporting:

  • Moore said on-camera that he itemized his credit card charges.  But the state board of elections audit report released in October indicated that they had not been.
  • Moore, in 2006, had been a sponsor of legislation requiring itemization of campaign credit card charges.  The same rule that he is being accused of violating this year.
  • The reporter discovered that, on the first campaign finance report following the passage of that 2006 legislation, Moore was still not in compliance with the itemization requirement.

underthebusAt the end of the report, the driveby anchor reports that Moore’s campaign had an updated statement on the matter.  According to the driveby, Moore’s campaign rep said Moore had provided the itemization information to his campaign treasurer, but the treasurer did not put it in the report.   (Maybe Jason Saine can borrow that line.) 

Wow.  *Talk about a profile in courage.*  That, um, explanation raises a few questions.  Lawyers are expected to be stickler for details in representing their clients.  How effective of a lawyer can Moore be if he overlooked those details for FIVE consecutive years on his own campaign report?  How much confidence can we have in him, as leader of one of our two legislative chambers, when he admits that he struggles to keep track of the details in his own campaign finance report?  How much confidence can we have in him as a legislator when he struggles to comply with legislation he sponsored?