The Ralph Hise for NC Senate Committee has not reported a number of contributions, amounting to $9,700, that have been reported by various Political Action Committees (PACs) as having been made to the campaign committee of State Senator Ralph Hise. Also, the Hise committee reported a $1,500.00 “refund” from “University of NC” for a payment that was never recorded, making it an impermissible contribution from UNC. Today I filed an amendment to my complaint to the State Board of Elections to include these anomalies.



The following payments to the Ralph Hise committee have been reported by various PACs but have not been recorded by the Ralph Hise committee in campaign finance reports. I have reviewed multiple reports for PAC contributions to Hise, both state and federal, and have not found corresponding returned checks or voided contributions for these nine items.

08/06/12 $500.00 Health Network Solutions PAC 09/26/12 $4,000.00 Branch Banking & Trust Comp of NC PAC 10/05/12 $250.00 EmergeOrtho PA PAC fka Triangle Orthopaedic Assoc PA PAC 12/14/12 $200.00 Natl Fed of Independent Business NC PAC 01/02/14 $500.00 NC Voters for Animal Welfare 07/21/16 $1,000.00 NC Chiropractic Assn Inc PAC 08/19/16 $2,000.00 Duke Energy Corp PAC 09/12/16 $250.00 Charter Communications NC PAC 09/14/16 $1,000.00 NC Orthopaedic Assn PAC

Almost all contributions were by check. The $500.00 contribution from NC Voters for Animal Welfare was noted as EFT (electronic funds transfer). The $4,000.00 from BB&T may have have been wrongly entered by the Ralph Hise committee as an excess contribution of $4,000 from the Eli Lilly PAC that was not reported by that committee. The NC Chiropractic Assn Inc PAC separately recorded a voided check entry on 07/21/16 of $1,000.00 but that appears to relate to a previous 02/01/16 $1,000.00 contribution also not recorded by the Ralph Hise committee.

The Hise committee recorded an amount of $1,500.00 on 12/09/13 noted as “University of NC, Refund from China trip”. Hise has been on two paid trips to China, one on 2013 and another in 2015. The 2013 trip called China Global Leaders Program included other legislators and was the subject of a State Ethics Commission advisory opinion that went into great detail explaining permissible payment of expenses. There is no corresponding itemized expenditure record in Hise’s campaign finance reports that represents any spending by the committee for this trip that could be refunded. In the absence of such a record this would appear to be an impermissible contribution from UNC.

Ralph Hise’s biographical information describes him as a “statistician and a member of the faculty at Mayland Community College in Spruce Pine“. You’d think he’d have a better handle on the math. Maybe he’s playing the odds that he won’t be audited. Hise’s campaign finance numbers just don’t add up.