News-Record.com

County Government Reporter Nate DeGraff received a question about the following paragraph in his story on the Guilford County Sheriff's race:

Blanks' recent financial supporters included developer Harry Falk, who contributed $4,000; mortgage broker C. Grady Patton, who contributed $1,000; and N.C. Supreme Court candidate Rachel Lea Hunter, who contributed $500.

The contributions shows up on both Hunter's(PDF) and Blanks' third quarter reports. Hunter's campaign reports also show contributions to Congressional hopeful Larry Kissel, Guilford DA candidate Julia Hejazi and a handful of others.

The problem is this: The NC Judicial Code of Conduct says it is permissible for judges and judicial candidates to:

identify himself/herself as a member of a political party and make financial contributions to a political party or organization; provided, however, that he/she may not personally make financial contributions or loans to any individual seeking election to office (other than himself/herself) except as part of a joint judicial campaign as permitted in subsection B(2); (Ed note: Bold added)

However, this is not as straightforward as it may seem.

There is no question that judges and judicial candidates are prohibited from writing a check from a personal checking account to someone's campaign. But does writing a check from a campaign account mean that someone has "personally" made a financial contribution.

For an answer, I turned to Paul Ross, the executive secretary of the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission. His answer was that there was no firm answer.

"That's something that hasn't been specifically addressed in the past, because most of them (judicial candidates) haven’t had the excess funds to do it," Ross said.

He laid out arguments for and against it being a violation.

For: “I can see an argument to be made that a campaign fund is an alter ego of you as an individual,” Ross said. He later added that giving a donation from a campaign account could be seen as an attempt “to get around the rule.” That may be particularly so in Hunter’s case, since her campaign is 100 percent self financed.

Against: “The board of elections treats a campaign committee and a candidate as separate.” The Board of Elections is seen as authoritative and prescient setting on a lot of campaign questions, but their General Council referred questions on this matter to Ross and the Judicial Standards Commission.

Ross did add this:

"If a judge calls me and says to me 'I'm thinking of doing this, should I?' my advice to him or her is going to be no. I would err on the side of caution."

I've put all this to Hunter in an e-mail this morning and will publish the response here if I get one.

For background: Hunter is running against incumbent justice Mark Martin. Hunter has made it an interesting campaign by doing things like trying to get "Madame Justice" added to her name on the ballot and comparing her opponent to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda minister.