I got a ticket once for an illegal left turn in a part of town I’d never traveled through before. A bush had almost completely grown over a “no left turn” sign, and I didn’t see it. The cop who set up a trap there knew the sign was barely visible, and even admitted it to me.
“You should have known the sign was there,” she said. “Haven’t you lived here your whole life?”
To really grind salt in the wound, the cop charged it as “driving the wrong way down a one way street,” so those they caught that day would get the full three points on their license. It cost me more than $1,000 by the time I was done with insurance and court fees.
That’s more than former Gov. Mike “Sleazley” Easley will pay for what amounts to money laundering through illegal flights and moving cash from donors for repairs to his home through his political campaign. Easley simply cleaned up appearances a bit by laundering the money through his campaign, rather than accepting sacks of cash directly from donors in public bathrooms, as former state House speaker Jim Black did. Black spent several years in federal prison. Even my non-political friends were floored by Easley’s sweetheart plea deal: a $1,000 fine, no probation and no prison time. “That’s it? I paid more than that for my DUI or third speeding ticket,” people said.
A few weeks before Sleazley’s plea deal came down, a well-known politician who shall remain nameless told me how it would go. This fall, President Obama would replace George Holding, the Bush-era Republican federal prosecutor who had gone after Easley, with a Democrat prosecutor. When that happened, everyone knew the federal investigation against Easley would end with no charges and no trial. So to beat the clock, they’d cut Easley a plea deal so incredible he couldn’t refuse it; they wanted to at least make a felon out of him and keep him from returning to the political arena to do more damage. Easley could have waited for the end of federal prosecutor Holding’s term, but Easley still faced potential state charges. So the Republican state prosecutor handling Easley’s case and the federal prosecutor got together and offered Easley the plea deal in exchange for ending all investigations into him.
The only way the rest of us can get a deal like that is to run for office. Justice is only served to members of the political class in North Carolina when opposing parties control the White House, the state legislature, the attorney general’s office and the governor’s mansion.
Until 2000, all four were controlled by Democrats — so North Carolina politics were essentially lawless. After 2000, when Bush took over, Republican federal prosecutors began cleaning house, sending Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps and Black, the speaker of the House, to prison for corruption. The state’s top cop, Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, generally ignores flagrant law-breaking until the federal investigators show up at the office of the Democratic politician in question with subpoenas. Then Cooper gets his rear in gear and launches an investigation so as to not look overtly corrupt. Essentially, justice only comes from outside the state and only during Republican presidential administrations.
When Democrats ruled every roost from the president on down, it became commonplace for high-ranking Democratic politicians to direct wealthy donors who had maxed out their political contributions to begin illegally paying for campaign flights. It’s what happens in a lawless state. That’s what Sleazley, and his successor Gov. Beverly E. Perdue, did because everyone else did, too. The media even got so accustomed to it that a small Raleigh think tank did much of the sleuthing in recent Perdue and Easley cases.
Had the GOP not gained control of the legislature for the first time in a century on Nov. 2, a new era of lawlessness would have begun. Instead, watch for Cooper to suddenly wake from his slumber and initiate actual investigations against Republican legislators. Also watch for Democratic federal prosecutors to be tough on the GOP, too. That’s good, because it will keep everyone honest.
With Democrats gunning to get their power back, we are about to have the cleanest era in government in, well, a century.
This article appears in Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2010.
