Commissioner Kevin Berger, two other commissioners, and the head of the county’s Republican Party have been sued by former Rockingham County Commissioner T. Craig Travis. He says they lied about him during the campaign.
Travis has sued for libel and defamation in Wake County Superior Court, but the truth may come out that isn’t pleasant. Its goal is to share the details of the money and schemes used to try to open business casinos in North Carolina. Three casinos are already run by Indian tribes in the state.
This case began when Travis ran for the board again in this year’s GOP primary. He says that the defendants in Rockingham lied about his record as a commissioner in emails and posts on social media because he was against a plan to change the land’s use so that a casino could open. Berger beat him by three points.
Travis has issued subpoenas to key players in the casino attempt to get information. This has caused the defendants to ask for a protective order to limit the requests.
Craig Schauer, a lawyer for the defendants, said in a request for the order, “Mr. Travis seems to be using this lawsuit as an excuse to go fishing about casinos instead of doing discovery on the parties named in the lawsuit.”
Berger is the son of Phil Berger (R-Rockingham), who is the leader of the state Senate. As a way to help rural areas get better at making money, Sen. Berger led the recent push in the legislature to bring casinos to Rockingham and two other counties, Anson and Nash. A lot of money was spent on lobbying and giving to important lawmakers’ campaigns to support the effort, but Republicans in the House have stopped it.
Travis’s case would normally be a local one that has a very small chance of success because political speech is protected in so many ways. But Travis is using the case to cast a wide net that could catch politicians from places other than Rockingham County.
Kevin Berger, commissioners Donald Powell and Mark Richardson, and GOP chairwoman Diane Parnell are all named as defendants in the case. So are advocacy groups with ties to Sen. Berger and former state Rep. Jason Saine, who just quit as the top budget writer for the House. Saine was able to get North Carolina to allow sports betting.
Travis has Alicia Jurney as his lawyer. She was also the lawyer for a person who sued House Speaker Tim Moore for alienation of love because he was seeing Scott Lassiter’s ex-wife, who is now running for state Senate. The case wasn’t heard in court.
No one could get in touch with Jurney or Schaurer for feedback.
This lawsuit is about something very private, so the people being sued may finally want to settle it. For now, they have asked that the case be thrown out.
If that doesn’t work, they’ve started looking for a judge and asked state Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby to appoint special Superior Court Judge Clayton Somers to the case. Somers was the chief of staff for Speaker Tim Moore.
Still, it’s a messy web. Newby’s daughter Sarah Newby, who is the finance director for the state GOP, helped convince the advocacy group Greater Carolina to take Republican politicians on a tour of a distillery in Louisville, Ky., as part of their lobbying for the casino.
Now, the defendants want the court to protect them and other people from Mr. Travis’s abuse of the subpoena power that causes them unreasonable stress, undue load, and cost.
Travis is being more general than normal, which is a good thing. His lawsuit has revealing details about a meeting in Maryland between the commissioners of Rockingham County and the owner of a casino. It shows how lawmakers and lobbyists are connected and lists the campaign payments that were made in support of the casino push.
Investigators from the government should carefully read Travis’s complaint, his lawyer’s requests for papers and communications, and the defendants’ refusal to hand them over.