The Docket: Candidate, Donor, Judge?

Before running for Wayne County Superior Court judge, Billy Strickland II was a bull rider turned farmer turned beaver trapper turned lawyer. He was also a frequent political donor.

Strickland’s financial contributions to Republican candidates continued after he filed to run for office in December 2023, records compiled by Open Secrets show. In 2024, he gave more than $15,000 to support presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Donald Trump, gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, and Hal Weatherman, who ran for lieutenant governor.

The North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct prohibits such giving. But an analysis by The Assembly finds it’s a prohibition many judges and candidates aren’t following. Six other attorneys running for judicial office and eight sitting judges also made recent political donations.

Judicial Candidates Made Numerous Prohibited Donations

At least 15 candidates in the 2024 election cycle made political donations while campaigning or serving as a judge, The Assembly found.

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Edenton Confederate Monument Fight Back in Court

Residents from eastern North Carolina sued the town of Edenton and Chowan County Board of Commissioners last week over a plan to move a Confederate monument from a prominent waterfront site to local courthouse grounds.

The lawsuit, filed January 3 in Chowan County Superior Court, contends that public officials violated open meeting laws while hammering out the details of a relocation plan we covered last month.

The 115-year-old statue of a gun-wielding soldier memorializing “Our Confederate Dead: 1881-1885” has been a flash point of debate through the years.

The murder of George Floyd and the protests afterward led to Edenton trying to become “a more just and equitable community.” As part of that process, the Edenton Town Council voted in February 2022 to move the statue from its South Broad Street pedestal in the heart of downtown to an unselected site.

The next month the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the North Carolina Division of The Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., and the Colonel William F. Martin Camp 1521 of The Sons of Confederate Veterans filed a lawsuit against the town.

Last November, the Edenton Town Council and Chowan County Board of Commissioners held a special meeting and approved a Memorandum of Understanding that would shift ownership of the statue from the town to the county and relocate it on the grounds of the Chowan County courthouse near the jail. If a judge signed off on the agreement, that was supposed to settle the suit filed by the Confederate-related groups.

The Rev. Dr. John Shannon, pastor of Providence Missionary Baptist Church in Edenton, and residents Sherronne Battle, Stella Brothers, Debra Miller, and Rod Phillips filed the lawsuit last week contending town and county officials held numerous meetings behind closed doors in violation of state law while hashing out the proposed settlement agreement.

No public comment was allowed during the November 25 meeting about the proposal.

“The pattern of behavior demonstrated by Defendants indicates a systemic disregard for the Open Meetings Law on matters of public importance,” the suit states. “This Court’s intervention is necessary to prevent ongoing and future violations, ensuring that public business is conducted openly and transparently as mandated by law.”

Because of that, the plaintiffs argue, the MOU should be declared null and void. They also contend the proposed transfer of the statue from the town to the county violates disposition of public property laws.

If the relocation plan is carried out, the suit argues, it would “exacerbate the Confederate monument’s offensiveness.”

“It flies in the face of governmental accountability and transparency to take an issue of significant public importance—like the future of a highly controversial Confederate monument—and move it into back rooms and closed sessions, out of public earshot and scrutiny,” said Jake Sussman, interim chief counsel for justice system reform at Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which is representing the plaintiffs.

—Anne Blythe

Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs talks to Johnston County voters. (Matt Ramey for The Assembly)

Still More Updates In State Supreme Court Race

Republican Jefferson Griffin is running out of options and time to stop the State Board of Elections from officially declaring his Democratic opponent, Allison Riggs, the winner in the state Supreme Court race.

Griffin has been trying to convince a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction so the State Board of Elections doesn’t certify the election results on January 10.

But Griffin scored a win on Monday when U.S. District Judge Richard Myers II sent the case back to the state Supreme Court. That court will now have to decide whether to intervene, throw out 60,000 votes and declare Griffin the winner.

If Griffin had lost there, his legal battle would have essentially ended. Riggs would keep her seat, and Republicans would retain their 5-2 majority.

Now the closely-watched race is in uncharted territory.

Democrats are betting on Riggs to win and Justice Anita Earls to keep her seat in 2026 to give them a better chance of taking the court back in 2028, when three seats open up. Democrats’ chances narrow if Griffin wins, giving the Republicans a 6-1 majority.

When election night ended nearly two months ago, Griffin was leading by just over 10,000 votes, well within the margin for Riggs to call for a machine recount. But during the roughly two-week period when county elections officials counted provisional and mail-in absentee ballots, Riggs took the lead by a little more than 600 votes. Griffin asked for a machine recount and a partial hand recount. At the end of both recounts, Riggs had a 734-vote lead.

Griffin also filed more than 300 election protests against 60,000 voters across North Carolina, including Riggs’ parents. The bulk of the protests alleged that state elections officials had illegally allowed people to cast ballots who did not provide a driver’s license or Social Security number on their voter registration forms.

Griffin also alleged illegal voters included people who had cast ballots early but died before Election Day, convicted felons, and people who failed to provide a photo ID with their mail-in absentee ballots. He also challenged the constitutionality of a state law that allows people born overseas to vote if their parents are registered here.

The State Board of Elections dismissed all of Griffin’s protests last month. In response, Griffin took the unusual step of bypassing Wake Superior Court and taking his appeal straight to the state Supreme Court, asking the court throw out the 60,000 votes and declare him the winner. The State Board of Elections removed the case and placed it in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. (He also filed complaints in Wake Superior Court; state elections officials moved those complaints to federal court.)

U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, who President-elect Donald Trump nominated in his first term, has the case. Last year, the state Republican Party made the same legal arguments Griffin is making to justify purging 225,000 voters from the voter registration rolls. Myers rejected many of those, and recently denied Griffin’s request for a temporary restraining order.

It’s not clear when the state Supreme Court will rule, but it has to issue a decision before the State Board of Election certifies the race.

Riggs has already declared victory and wants Griffin to concede. On Sunday, she spoke at a Democratic Party rally in Raleigh.

“We will not stop until we have put this election fully to bed,” Riggs said. “We will make sure that our government is led by people who will protect your right to vote.”

—Michael Hewlett

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