By Cash Michaels
He was an ambitious legislative leader who not only co-chaired the
powerful state House Appropriations Committee, and chaired the
influential House Health panel, but was also once nominated by his
Democratic House colleagues to serve as speaker pro tem.
No doubt about it, for much of his eight terms in office, state Rep.
Thomas Wright was considered an up-and-coming star in the Legislature
and state Democratic Party.
During the eight-year tenure of
former House Speaker Jim Black, the young New Hanover County Democrat
was once ranked the most powerful African-American lawmaker in the
General Assembly, and one of the top twelve most effective overall in
the House.
His approval was sought, influence highly regarded, and connections to
power well established. Wright didn’t suffer fools, and steadfastly
played by his own rules, no matter what the risks to himself, or the
costs to others.
In the world of Democratic Party power politics, Thomas Wright was a definite player.
But the glory days may now be over for Wright. The NC Board of
Elections Tuesday voted unanimously to ask Wake County District
Attorney C. Colin Willoughby to mount a criminal investigation into the
black lawmaker’s alleged acceptance of illegal corporate campaign
contributions, failure to report campaign expenses for funds he
personally used, and perjury on his campaign reports.
“There is very ample evidence to support a referral for violations of
election laws committed by Representative Wright,” Larry Leake,
chairman of the state Elections Board, said during the public hearing
in Raleigh.
After five hours of blistering witness testimony alleging forged
campaign checks, fraudulent correspondence to illegally secure a bank
loan, and nearly a quarter of a million dollars in campaign
contributions spent in places like Circuit City and Victoria’s Secret,
Wright, 51, through his attorney, refused to testify in his own
defense, exercising his Fifth Amendment right against
self-incrimination.
Wright then walked out of the state Board of Elections hearing the same
way he walked in – bold, defiant, and seemingly confident that despite
the very serious charges he may now face from both state, and federal
prosecutors, he would overcome.
At the General Assembly, House Speaker Joe Hackney (D-Orange) made it
clear to reporters he wasn’t pleased with what he was hearing. While
Wright may indeed continue to represent his New Hanover/Pender district
until such time he decides to step down, Hackney made it clear if he
still could credibly do that, it was all Wright would be allowed to do.
Others demanded that Wright immediately step down.
“…[W]e again call for Mr. Wright to resign his legislative position,”
Linda Daves, chair of the NC Republican Party said in a statement.
“Considering the seriousness of his alleged crimes, resigning is the
right thing to do for North Carolina.”
Rob Thompson, Public Interest Advocate with NC Public Interest Research
Group wrote, “Rep. Wright, I have a message for you: Stop letting the
people of North Carolina pay your salary, quit your job, plead guilty,
and go to jail.”
The House District 18 representative has said he will not resign,
hasn’t done anything wrong, and looks forward to his day in court.
However several weeks ago, Wright, who has served in the state House
since 1993, gave up two prominent committee chairmanships under
increasing pressure because of the looming controversy.
He and his attorney are said to have cooperated with state Elections
Board investigators, who went through all of his campaign reports and
bank records, revealing at least five accounts where campaign funds
were mixed with personal income.
Four of those accounts were allegedly never reported to the state Elections Board, as required by law.
Wright’s personal earnings beyond his legislative salary came from
health consulting fees and being a part-time EMS instructor, but
investigators say bank records show he got the bulk of his personal
income from campaign contributions.
Based on a five-month Elections Board probe, the allegations Wright
refused to speak to this week centered on his suspicious handling of
campaign funds.
According to investigative evidence and testimony at Tuesday’s hearing,
Wright allegedly spent over $220,000 contributed to his re-election
campaign between 2000 and 2006 on personal trips, items and business.
Technically during that time, the law allowed the personal use of
campaign funds by candidates, just as long as they accounted for the
expenditures with receipts in their required reports.
While the practice of personal use of campaign funding was finally
outlawed last October, a strict accounting of all spending was still
legally required.
Wright, allegedly, failed to account for those expenditures.
He also allegedly committed perjury when he failed to report over
$220,500 in campaign contributions, some of it from corporations, which
is also illegal. If the failure-to-report allegation is sustained by
the Wake District Attorney, Wright could be charged with a felony.
Other felonies could result from allegations that the name of Wright’s
former campaign treasurer, Karen Davis, may have been forged on three
campaign checks in 2002 totaling $2,800 made out to the House
representative.
Davis testified Tuesday that she had no recollection signing those checks, and doubted that the signature displayed was hers.
Rep. Wright was also accused of cajoling Torlen Wade, the director of
the NC Dept. of Health and Human Services’ Office of Research,
Demonstration and Rural Health Development, to issue a 2002 letter
pledging a phony $150,000 state government grant to Wright’s nonprofit
Community Health Foundation, so that the letter could be used to secure
a real estate loan from a bank to purchase a building on North Fourth
Street for the foundation, and a museum commemorating the 1898 massacre.
But according to Election Board investigators, Wright not only failed
to pay back the bank loan, but he also stiffed his friend Wayne Lofton,
whose parents owned the building being purchased for the same amount.
Wright allegedly used a letter from the bank to convince the Loftons to
make the sale.
When the bank foreclosed for nonpayment, however, Lofton’s parents
never got their money, losing the building in the process. Torlen Wade
was placed on paid administrative leave Tuesday, pending the outcome of
an internal audit. Though subpoenaed to appear at the hearing, Wade
refused to attend or issue any statements.
There were also disclosures about the foundation’s “nonprofit” status.
In solicitation letters for donations, Wright always noted a tax ID
number.
Said number is usually assigned by the Internal Revenue Service to certify that per their records, the entity is a nonprofit.
That was good enough for the Anheuser-Busch Company, which donated $5,000 to Wright’s foundation at his request.
Problem, investigators said. The IRS had no record of Wright’s
foundation’s nonprofit tax ID number. Unless that discrepancy can be
explained, it could immediately result in an additional federal
criminal probe.
Federal authorities were present at the hearing Tuesday.
Wright has been accused several times before of conflict of interest,
or not reporting income or campaign contributions in a timely manner,
as required by law.
It is no accident, most observers note, that Wright’s alleged
recklessness with ethics exploded into full bloom in 1999 after he
supported Jim Black [D- Mecklenburg] for House speaker over former
House Speaker Dan Blue [D-Wake], who Wright originally endorsed.
Once elected, Speaker Black, in exchange for unquestioned loyalty,
generously rewarded Wright with key committee chairmanships, unfettered
access, and a virtual blank ethics check to exploit the political
process however he saw fit.
The result, observers say, was a brazen display of arrogance that went
unchecked for years, with the House speaker himself leading the way.
In 2002-03, Wright accepted a $35,000 fee from a health programs
foundation that was closely associated with the NC Dept. of Health and
Human Services. As co-chair of the House Appropriations Committee,
which oversaw NCDHHS, Wright’s critics noted that clearly his fee
acceptance was a conflict.
Wright said he had no idea the foundation, which received approximately
$325,000 in state funding annually, was associated with state
government. He kept the money.
On another occasion, Speaker Black awarded $50,000 from a
taxpayer-funded slush fund he controlled to the New Hanover Community
Health Center, whose board Rep. Wright was chairman of.
Eyebrows were raised, and the practice has now been outlawed.
Neither Wright, Black, nor any of the other state lawmakers who
routinely abused the money and power they came in contact with, worried
about ever being stopped. There was a common code that everyone
protected everyone else, no matter what they knew, or how much.
Many African-American House members, who could never raise the high
sums of money their white counterparts did, were highly susceptible to
this.
Though there was a weak House ethics structure, lawmakers were pretty
much assured that no whistles would ever be blown. The hunt for money
and position was a constant in the Legislature for everyone, and Jim
Black knew how to keep his minions in line by either raising truckloads
of campaign money, or showing some like Wright how to get their own.
When asked in 2004 about conflict of interest allegations against Rep. Wright, Black told The Wilmington Journal
then, “If we have a conflict of interest as legislators, it is up to
each of us to determine for ourselves if it is a conflict of interest.
Now maybe at some time we’ll change those rules.”
Those
House ethics rules were eventually toughened, but that didn’t stop
Speaker Black, or Wright apparently, from consistently violating them.
Black, who was forced to step down from office almost immediately after
winning re-election last November, eventually pled guilty to state and
federal corruption charges.
He will be sentenced shortly.
It is believed that as part of a plea arrangement with the US
Attorney’s Office, Black spilled the beans on other state lawmakers who
allegedly also had their hands in the public cookie jar.
One of those lawmakers, observers speculate, had to be one of Black’s most loyal lieutenants, Thomas Wright.
The man who brought down Speaker Black is the same man who filed a
detailed complaint with the state Elections Board last December against
Rep. Wright, former Democratic consultant Joe Sinsheimer.
Because the state Board is understaffed and under funded, crippling its
ability to properly monitor the campaign funding activities of each and
every state lawmaker, Sinsheimer has been doing a lot of the legwork
for his complaints, digging up evidence and pushing for answers.
The result – Jim Black is going to prison, and Thomas Wright may end up there too.
“I filed a complaint asking the State Board of Elections to investigate
whether the Wright Committee deliberately filed false, incomplete and
or misleading campaign finance reports during the 2006 election cycle,”
Sinsheimer wrote in a February letter to Speaker Hackney.
Wright was already under state Elections Board inquiry, thanks to
Sinsheimer, for his alleged delay in reporting $4,000 in campaign
contributions from executives with the Sims Hugo Neu Company, which had
previously wanted to build a hazardous waste landfill in Navassa.
“At the center of my complaint was the question of whether Rep. Wright
tried to hide contributions from a controversial landfill operator
before his May 2006 primary election and whether Rep. Wright may have
promised legislative favors in return for campaign contributions,”
Sinsheimer wrote. “The fact that Rep. Wright filed false and misleading
reports is without dispute. The more serious question of whether Rep.
Wright perjured himself when he certified that his campaign reports
were “complete, true and correct” is now subject to an investigation by
the State Board of Election.”
“In May 2006, Rep. Wright was the sole sponsor of HB 2869, a
legislative initiative at the center of Jim Black’s scheme to accept
cash payoffs from chiropractors in return for legislative favors,”
Sinsheimer continued. “To date, Rep. Wright has refused to explain his
involvement in this legislation-for-hire scheme. Surely this is going
to attract the attention of state and federal investigators.”
Last month, Sinsheimer wrote Speaker Hackney requesting “…a formal
investigation into the 2005-2006 legislative history of HB 503,
legislation that would have required certified nurse anesthetists to
work under a doctor’s supervision.
Specifically, I am asking you to call for a formal inquiry into the
question of whether Representative Thomas Wright, Representative
William Wainwright and former House Speaker Jim Black may have
collaborated to block passage of HB 503 in return for a series of
bundled campaign contributions from nurse anesthetists and others.”
Until recently, Wright was chair of the House Health Committee that handled the measure.
“What followed Rep. Wright’s blockage of HB 503 was an orgy of campaign
giving from nurse anesthetists to former Speaker Black, Rep. Wright,
and Rep. Wainwright, another powerful member of the House Committee on
Health,” Sinsheimer wrote. “In February 2006, the Thomas Wright
Committee reported receiving thirty-seven (37) contributions from
individuals listing their occupation as certified registered nurse
anesthetists (CRNA) totaling $5,950. Wright previously had received
$2000 in the fall of 2005 from the political action committee of the NC
Association of Nurse Anesthetists, bringing his total take to $7950.”
Sinsheimer says the alleged quid pro quo “…has raised the ugly question
of whether Representative Wright may have exchanged legislative favors
in return for campaign monies that he directed to entities that he
personally controlled.”
“I’m going to keep pushing,” Sinsheimer told The Wilmington Journal in February as more and more published reports questioned other allegedly shady “legislator-for-hire” schemes involving Wright.
What happens to Rep. Wright now is not clear. He’s maintained in the
past he’s done nothing wrong. He’s not expected to step down anytime
soon, though to do that would allow constituents in both New Hanover
and Pender counties to choose new leadership.
How long will the Wake DA’s probe take, and will a federal grand jury indict Wright, are also questions up in the air.
One thing is for sure, however – Thomas Wright’s political career is effectively over.
