WATCHDOG ACCUSES VIDEO-POKER INTERESTS OF VIOLATING CAMPAIGNFINANCE LAWS.

Longtime campaign-finance watchdog Bob Hall asked the State Board of Elections to look into whether video-poker interests bundled contributions to legislators in the 2022 election cycle.

His complaint alleges that industry participants gave legislators an "eye-popping $885,000" between 2019 and 2022. The figure that "exceeds the combined total of all the contributions that the PACs of Wells Fargo, Bank of America and the N.C. Automobile Dealers Association' gave in that time," Hall said in the document.

It looks to him that the donors consciously avoided forming a PAC--unlike their practice in the 2000s--to get around campaign-finance restrictions. Leaders of the N.C. Coin Operators Association instead "collected and bundled together checks from video poker donors across the state and on multiple occasions delivered the contributions as a package to legislators," he alleged.

Hall singled out clumps of donations to six legislators--

House Speaker Tim Moore, Senate President Pro Tern Phil Berger, Senate Rules Chairman Bill Rabon, House Rules Chairman Destin Hall, House Majority Leader John Bell and Rep. Jason Saine--that occurred as or just after voters went to the polls for the 2022 general election.

That was "after the due date for the final campaign disclosure report preceding the 2022 election," timing that made it "impossible for the media or public to take note of their size and frequency before the...