Until Tuesday North Carolina's Democrat Governor Beverly Perdue had little visibility outside her home state. That all changed quickly when she floated the absurd theory that Congressional elections should be suspended so Congress could work on creating jobs or something.
Left unmentioned in the aftermath was this opinion item from a North Carolina paper noting Perdue's campaign finances are under investigation and there's a strong likelihood there may be criminal charges forthcoming.
Last week, Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby let it be known that more criminal charges are expected in the investigation of Gov. Beverly Perdue’s campaign finances.
Willoughby’s comments to WRAL-TV confirmed that the investigation into unreported airplane flights by the Perdue campaign is continuing.
But the prosecutor added that he has seen nothing that implicates Perdue.
Willoughby has been reviewing information collected by the State Bureau of Investigation into Perdue campaign finances after an initial investigation by the State Board of Elections found dozens of unreported campaign flights.
The elections board review led to a $30,000 fine against the Perdue campaign. The governor admitted mistakes, but said none were intentional.
Still, a Perdue contributor, Robert Lee Caldwell of Morganton, was indicted in February on obstruction of justice charges. The indictment alleges that Caldwell paid for a plane to fly Perdue to a campaign stop, had someone else report paying for it, and then reimbursed the man with cash.
While none of this implicates Perdue at this time, the investigation apparently is zeroing in on someone inside her campaign, which could prove quite damaging when she's up for election next year, assuming we still have them at that time. To no surprise, other North Carolina Democrats could soon be lining up to face Perdue in a primary.
Just last week, Democratic state Rep. Bill Faison of Orange County made noises sounding like he might be considering the idea. (He also suggested that Perdue might “decide to do something else.”)
But the Democratic officeholders with more realistic chances of taking out an incumbent governor — Attorney General Roy Cooper and Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton — are cautious politicians who aren’t likely to give up their current offices without believing success is likely.
If she survives primary season, does Perdue then end up a damaged candidate?
Bear in mind this was published Tuesday before Perdue's insipid statements, which have received national attention and widespread ridicule. Also preceding Tuesday's silliness was this story about a suspect campaign contribution being returned. Sure appears to us we've got a pattern of impropriety coming from Perdue's camp. Perhaps she should get her own house in order before she lectures us some more.
Speaking of which, after her bomshell comments were revealed Tuesday, her media defenders weakly tried to claim she was just joking, a claim few are buying.
Listen to her comments, via The Daily Caller:
I must have missed the joke and I didn't hear anyone laughing. Republicans are not amused either.
“Listen to the Governor’s words: She wasn’t joking at all,” North Carolina GOP spokesman Rob Lockwood told The Daily Caller. “The congressional Democrats are wildly unpopular in North Carolina, so she may have been trying to invent a solution to save their jobs from public accountability.”
“If it was a joke, what was the set-up?,” Lockwood adds. “What was the punch-line? Where was the pause for laughter? It took them three hours to say it was a ‘joke,’ but when that flopped it became ‘hyperbole.’ We’ll just call it an unconstitutionally bad idea.”
