News-Record.com

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Last week, I - along with a bunch of other people, I'm sure - got an e-mail that declared Sen. Martin Nesbitt was about to face criminal charges due to a raging conflict of interest. It seemed, said the e-mailer, that Nesbitt was part of racing team who was sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield. BCBS, of course, has multiple axes to grind down here at the legislature, where Nesbitt weilds some influence.

The text of the e-mail surfaced in a few places, like this link, but was quickly disavowed.

And really, it was written in a way that marked it as pretty laughable. Once you've read a few thousand news stories and press releases, you begin to get a sense for when someone is ginning something up that's bogus.

In this case, that urge to dismiss was informed by Nesbitt not really being friendly to Blue Crosses interests. For example, he pushed particularly hard in the recent go round over mental health parity. Also, I'm told by older, wiser hands that this same charge surfaces against Nesbitt every so often, kind of like the swallows returning to Capistrano.

So I let it lie.

Then one of my older, crankier colleagues looked up Nesbitt Racing, which is run by Nesbitt's son and, in fact, sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield.

So this idea began to bug me, and it finally bugged me to a point yesterday where I did some checking.

Nesbitt is a crew chief for the team and according to this incorporation filing is the company's vice president.

The elder Nesbitt says that filing was made in error and, in fact, he is not a vice president of the company nor does he derrive any income from the company. (He does own a separate company with his son, which is the reason for the confusion.)

Fine. Good. I guess.

But already having gone half way down the road with him, I put the question to Nesbitt anyway. Does the fact that Nesbitt is a legislator, and BCBS does big business before the General Assembly, lead to a conflict due to the company's racing team sponsorship?

"The Republican opponents up there have raised the issue to the point where I asked," Nesbitt told me Monday night. He says the answer came back from the state ethics commission that no, it was not something he would need to list on his ethics disclosure forms.

"The problem we've got down here is the members all have a life," Nesbitt said. No one, well almost no one, can afford to live off of just the legislative salary of $13,000-plus a year. Nesbitt makes the bulk of his living as a lawyer. To boot, he added, family members have to make a living irrespective of their loved ones involvement in politics.

"We all have business ties to various entitites in this world, and the key to this job is to not let it influence you when you're making decisions down here," Nesbitt said.

He pointed out that his work with the racing team wasn't exactly a secret. In fact, the Asheville Citizen Times - Nesbitt's hometown paper - ran a piece in 2006 that noted his work as a crew chief and BCBS's sponsorship:

Nesbitt is the crew chief of one race car team and a consultant for another. Both teams race in the United Speed Alliance Racing Hooters Pro Cup Series. It was created in the mid-1990s to give grass-roots racers a chance to compete in a national touring circuit and make a little money.

It's like baseball's minor league. But the stakes are still large, namely corporate sponsorships from companies like Glock, Sears, Blue Cross Blue Shield and McDonalds.

"My opponents just want to inflict pain at any cost," Nesbitt said of the story. And there is a healthy helping of political hackery in this story, no doubt.

But especially in the wake of the Jim Black mess, these questions are going to get asked more and more often, even of legislators who we scruffy media types are pretty sure are on the up and up. It's getting harder to take a pass.

At a certain time, prior to 2005 maybe, it probably seemed perfectly natural the the optomitrist PAC was giving to Black's legislative allies. That might have been a story about political tactics, but not hard core political sculduggery, right?

So I asked Nesbitt if legislators weren't having to tread more carefully now, asnwer for potential confilicts, and just pick through more questions in the wake of the Black scandal?

Not really, he said.

"I think everybody here is more aware of the technicalities of your relationships," he said. But those inclined to keep to the path of the striaght and narrow would keep on it, and those inclined to push the boundaries of good taste and the law would keep on doing that, he said.

"Your honest people are honest people, and the one's that are going to be dishonest are going to be dishonest," Nesbitt said.

So where have we got to?

Well, I don't see a whole lot of evidence that Nesbitt is carrying BCBS' water down here. Quite to the contrary. And under the state's current ethics laws and guidelines, it's hard for me to say he's even approaching a line. (Although I do have a colleague who believes that legislative ethics laws ought to be broadened out to encompass things like this case, but I'll let him make that arguement should he be so inclined.)

Frankly, it's probably a bit unfair that this whole thing is getting metnioned at all, but when you go to all to bother of getting yourself elected, life ceases to be fair.

And probably, in this post-Black era, a whole lot more questions are going to get asked about perefectly innocent stuff, and maybe a few things that aren't so innocent. And maybe, on balance, that's not such a bad thing.