Senate leader Phil Berger’s primary campaign raised 34 times as much money as his challenger, Rockingham County Sam Page, but Page’s candidacy was boosted by four outside groups — most of which haven’t disclosed much about their donors and spending.
Page leads Berger by just 23 votes with a recount pending, and Page likely benefitted from a barrage of TV ads and mailers attacking the powerful Republican lawmaker. That ad spending from outside groups totaled more than $800,000, a figure that could be significantly higher because only some of the spending has been disclosed so far.
One of the groups, Guilford-Rockingham Alliance, has not yet filed required disclosure reports with the State Board of Elections. The deadline for independent expenditure groups to file their first-quarter reports was Feb. 24. The other group, Piedmont Accountability Coalition, only filed its report two weeks after the election ended.
Both groups were run by Patrick Sebastian, a Republican consultant who is now serving as a “post-election advisor” to Page. Sebastian’s firm, Tar Heel Targeting, has previously worked for a variety of Republican campaigns, including those of former Congressman Renee Ellmers, Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey, Rep. Tim Reeder and former Gov. Pat McCrory, who is Sebastian’s uncle.
Here’s what we know about the two groups run by Sebastian, as well as two other organizations that ran ads against Berger during the campaign:
Guilford-Rockingham Alliance: The Greensboro-based group was formed in January and spent at least $430,000 on TV ads and mailers criticizing Berger. One of the ads called his proposal for new casinos “crooked” and accused him of “using campaign donations to pay for real estate” while hiring his wife for a government job.
As of March 18, it had filed paperwork with the State Board of Elections disclosing the ad buys — made through Sebastian’s firm — but no disclosures that list donors. Sebastian referred questions about the group’s disclosure reports to its generic email address.
Piedmont Accountability Coalition: The group formed on Jan. 29 using the address of the Apex accountant who serves as its treasurer. After WUNC News asked questions about the group’s failure to file disclosure reports before the Feb. 24 deadline, it filed its first-quarter report on Tuesday.
That report lists Sheila Mikhail of Hillsborough as the “controlling entity” who contributed $225,000 of the $350,000 the group raised by Feb. 14. Mikhail is the founder of multiple biotechnology companies and is an advocate for breast cancer screenings.
She is registered as an unaffiliated voter, and records show she voted in this year’s Democratic primary in Orange County. She has previously donated to six political campaigns, all of them for Democrats like Gov. Josh Stein and former Gov. Roy Cooper. Mikhail is featured in one of Piedmont Accountability’s TV ads, which claims that Berger “blocked a Republican bill to pay for expanded cancer screenings.” The ads were booked through Sebastian’s firm.