As you know, I am the Treasurer of the Chapel Hill Leadership PAC. We were organized in 2015, not to "circumvent town campaign giving limits" as you suggest, but to follow the intent of the NC Election Laws. Any organization or group of people which raises and spends money to support candidates for elective office or to take a public position on any referenda contained in an election is expected to form a Political Action Committee (PAC) and to be registered with the NC State Board of Elections (SBE). This PAC is required to appoint a treasurer, who must complete a training course administered by the SBE. The Treasurer is then required to prepare and submit periodic Campaign Finance Reports to the SBE and to county Boards of Elections. These reports contain the donation amounts and names and information about the donors to the PAC, as well as the amounts and information about all expenditures by the PAC. CHL-PAC will except donations from anyone who desires to support our chosen candidates.
The CHL-PAC has, through the years, raised and disbursed funds to support GOTV efforts in support of candidates for Chapel Hill Mayor and Council, including your candidacy. These include distributing printed materials through canvassing and mailings. We have not given any donations directly to Candidate Committees, but if we were to do so, we would be limited to the current maximum of $357 per candidate. You seem suggest that the activities of a PAC will affect the "fairness" of an election. Certainly, you don't believe that our support of your candidacy was unfair, because you did not at any time deny our support for you.
I agree with you that we should always have transparent elections, wherein all donations and expenditures are public records. Rather than attack CHL-PAC, I suggest that you should call out NEXT and Triangle Blog Blog for not revealing their election funding (i.e. dark money), for their actions and attacks on homeowners truly undercut fair elections.
Reposting here since I'm not seeing it when I looked back at this page:
Tom Henkel (re: his comment), you might be interested to note that your response in NO WAY contradicts what Karen wrote about the CHALT PAC being formed to circumvent local election laws. You wrote: "We were organized in 2015, not to 'circumvent town campaign giving limits' as you suggest, but to follow the intent of the NC Election Laws." But NOT the LOCAL election laws.
You (conveniently and self-servingly) ignore the obvious fact, which Karen mentioned, that the Chapel Hill election laws were made to be stronger (and more locally reasonable) than the NC election laws. Maybe you didn't read Karen's whole previous blog. Your group of wealthy donors prefer the State limits since you can easily buy elections, given the more-limiting local limits. Your subversion of this fact, as far as I can tell from the outside over all these years, is typical of your group over the years; it's at least what I expect in ANY communication/mailing, etc. from your group.
You also wrote: "You seem suggest that the activities of a PAC will affect the 'fairness' of an election. Certainly, you don't believe that our support of your candidacy was unfair, because you did not at any time deny our support for you." Karen obviously does believe that, as I certainly do! Even if she and several of the current board did take your money back then, it doesn't in any way diminish the truth of the statement. PAC's of all kinds and flavors have that inevitable outcome; if you don't see it, it's only because you actually rely on it and have made a decision not to see it.
It seems fairly obvious to anyone paying attention that with the amount of money CHALT is pouring into the election, as well as the huge amount of money that Adam Searing has received for his attempted election, that you are simply confirming her assertions. Since I received mail from your group daily for the past 3 weeks or so, I'll say you are trying to buy the election! And you are happy that you might just succeed.
Karen Stegman, Jess Anderson and I all sought support from CHALT and received it. Thus, the three of us are "CHALT candidates." We entered the Town Council race as unknowns and benefited from CHALT printing election materials for us as part of the CHALT slate (albeit in different election cycles). None of us would have won without CHALT's support.
In answer to Geoff's question, any CHALT election expense is reported transparently and is fully viewable in the reports sent to the Board of elections. You can read Treasurer Tom Henkel 's full explanation in an open letter to Karen at this link . https://www.chalt.org/openlettertokaren/ The political action committee reports all election expenses as well as donors as required by NC Election law and we embrace transparency. CHALT has been since its inception in 2015 a grass roots group of energetic volunteers. Read about why we formed under “about CHALT” at chalt.org.
It’s truly unfortunate that this has devolved into name calling, ageism and elitism (many of us who disagree with the direction this town is taking are not rich). If the Town would just listen to its residents, this backlash would not be happening. Too many developments have been going up lately with hardly any affordable housing. Why is that? That is the problem many of us see. There’s no need to blame CHALT and individuals for this. There needs to be more dialog and more consensus. No one is buying this election. People who live here and pay taxes and have raised their children here are angry. We are all Chapel Hill. We do want affordable housing. But we are not seeing it done in an intelligent way. That is the problem.
Thank heaven for CHALT who has provided a counterweight to corporate interests. We’ve worked to improve development projects and to make sure neighborhood interests were at the table. It’s ridiculous to say an election can be bought when the TBB and allied organizations contribute dark money to run their operations. If you search Bd of Elections, all our records are there, unlike TBB and NEXT.
Thank you for this excellent statement about CHALT and its predecessor NIMBY organizations who have tried to keep Chapel Hill for themselves. They forget that students and young adults are the “permanent” population and that old white folks are the temporary residents.
Karen --
As you know, I am the Treasurer of the Chapel Hill Leadership PAC. We were organized in 2015, not to "circumvent town campaign giving limits" as you suggest, but to follow the intent of the NC Election Laws. Any organization or group of people which raises and spends money to support candidates for elective office or to take a public position on any referenda contained in an election is expected to form a Political Action Committee (PAC) and to be registered with the NC State Board of Elections (SBE). This PAC is required to appoint a treasurer, who must complete a training course administered by the SBE. The Treasurer is then required to prepare and submit periodic Campaign Finance Reports to the SBE and to county Boards of Elections. These reports contain the donation amounts and names and information about the donors to the PAC, as well as the amounts and information about all expenditures by the PAC. CHL-PAC will except donations from anyone who desires to support our chosen candidates.
The CHL-PAC has, through the years, raised and disbursed funds to support GOTV efforts in support of candidates for Chapel Hill Mayor and Council, including your candidacy. These include distributing printed materials through canvassing and mailings. We have not given any donations directly to Candidate Committees, but if we were to do so, we would be limited to the current maximum of $357 per candidate. You seem suggest that the activities of a PAC will affect the "fairness" of an election. Certainly, you don't believe that our support of your candidacy was unfair, because you did not at any time deny our support for you.
I agree with you that we should always have transparent elections, wherein all donations and expenditures are public records. Rather than attack CHL-PAC, I suggest that you should call out NEXT and Triangle Blog Blog for not revealing their election funding (i.e. dark money), for their actions and attacks on homeowners truly undercut fair elections.
Regards,
Tom Henkel
Reposting here since I'm not seeing it when I looked back at this page:
Tom Henkel (re: his comment), you might be interested to note that your response in NO WAY contradicts what Karen wrote about the CHALT PAC being formed to circumvent local election laws. You wrote: "We were organized in 2015, not to 'circumvent town campaign giving limits' as you suggest, but to follow the intent of the NC Election Laws." But NOT the LOCAL election laws.
You (conveniently and self-servingly) ignore the obvious fact, which Karen mentioned, that the Chapel Hill election laws were made to be stronger (and more locally reasonable) than the NC election laws. Maybe you didn't read Karen's whole previous blog. Your group of wealthy donors prefer the State limits since you can easily buy elections, given the more-limiting local limits. Your subversion of this fact, as far as I can tell from the outside over all these years, is typical of your group over the years; it's at least what I expect in ANY communication/mailing, etc. from your group.
You also wrote: "You seem suggest that the activities of a PAC will affect the 'fairness' of an election. Certainly, you don't believe that our support of your candidacy was unfair, because you did not at any time deny our support for you." Karen obviously does believe that, as I certainly do! Even if she and several of the current board did take your money back then, it doesn't in any way diminish the truth of the statement. PAC's of all kinds and flavors have that inevitable outcome; if you don't see it, it's only because you actually rely on it and have made a decision not to see it.
It seems fairly obvious to anyone paying attention that with the amount of money CHALT is pouring into the election, as well as the huge amount of money that Adam Searing has received for his attempted election, that you are simply confirming her assertions. Since I received mail from your group daily for the past 3 weeks or so, I'll say you are trying to buy the election! And you are happy that you might just succeed.
Karen Stegman, Jess Anderson and I all sought support from CHALT and received it. Thus, the three of us are "CHALT candidates." We entered the Town Council race as unknowns and benefited from CHALT printing election materials for us as part of the CHALT slate (albeit in different election cycles). None of us would have won without CHALT's support.
In answer to Geoff's question, any CHALT election expense is reported transparently and is fully viewable in the reports sent to the Board of elections. You can read Treasurer Tom Henkel 's full explanation in an open letter to Karen at this link . https://www.chalt.org/openlettertokaren/ The political action committee reports all election expenses as well as donors as required by NC Election law and we embrace transparency. CHALT has been since its inception in 2015 a grass roots group of energetic volunteers. Read about why we formed under “about CHALT” at chalt.org.
It’s truly unfortunate that this has devolved into name calling, ageism and elitism (many of us who disagree with the direction this town is taking are not rich). If the Town would just listen to its residents, this backlash would not be happening. Too many developments have been going up lately with hardly any affordable housing. Why is that? That is the problem many of us see. There’s no need to blame CHALT and individuals for this. There needs to be more dialog and more consensus. No one is buying this election. People who live here and pay taxes and have raised their children here are angry. We are all Chapel Hill. We do want affordable housing. But we are not seeing it done in an intelligent way. That is the problem.
Thank heaven for CHALT who has provided a counterweight to corporate interests. We’ve worked to improve development projects and to make sure neighborhood interests were at the table. It’s ridiculous to say an election can be bought when the TBB and allied organizations contribute dark money to run their operations. If you search Bd of Elections, all our records are there, unlike TBB and NEXT.
Thank you for this excellent statement about CHALT and its predecessor NIMBY organizations who have tried to keep Chapel Hill for themselves. They forget that students and young adults are the “permanent” population and that old white folks are the temporary residents.