Ben Carson's national finance chairman Dean Parker resigned Thursday morning amid questions about his use of campaign fund and criticism from Carson allies and donors.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, appointed Parker, a tech industry entrepreneur from Mobile, Alabama, in May to spearhead the campaign’s fundraising efforts. Parker’s been a relatively little-noticed campaign power, having Carson’s ear despite friction with other leaders. Since he joined, some campaign insiders told POLITICO, his operation has piled up unnecessary expenses and paid hefty consulting fees to an inexperienced staff. Parker recently began earning a $20,000 monthly salary, which veteran campaign operatives say is unusual for what is typically an unpaid, honorary role.


The bills for Parker’s shop, the inside sources said, were easy to overlook in the fall as the campaign raked in small donations, Carson soared in the polls and the campaign’s direct-mail operation generated tens of millions of dollars. But Parker’s operation became a sore point as the campaign lost its footing in mid-November and the candidate’s poll numbers slipped, they added. Even as senior leaders questioned Parker in leadership discussions, Carson still backed him on financial and hiring decisions, the campaign sources said.

Campaign finance reports show Parker’s operation, based in Mobile, racked up at least $216,000 in expenses from July through September, the most recent quarter for which reports are publicly available. Many of those expenses were paid through a network of limited liability companies set up for individual consultants on Parker’s finance team. The bottom line is a small fraction of the millions spent on direct mail, phone solicitations and list-building in the same period. But Parker’s detractors say he also frustrated some donors with brusque behavior and infuriated a longtime Carson confidant, Terry Giles, by insinuating that Giles orchestrated a leak of internal documents.

“He drove right over you. He’s kind of bullyish. His arms are spread open so nobody gets by him,” said Nancy Pickard, a Carson fundraiser based in North Carolina whose son was once a patient of Carson’s at Johns Hopkins. Pickard, who hosted a September event for Carson that she said raised about $200,000, said Parker routinely blocked her access to Carson.

In an interview on MSNBC shortly after resigning, Parker said he stepped down to refocus the media's attention. "It was time to say, you know what? I'm not going to let him have me be the focus of his campaign during a debate or this season getting so close to Iowa," Parker said. "I sat down with him this morning and I said, Dr. Carson, I love you. I know you love me. We've been great friends. We will continue to be great friends. I'm wondering if the best thing I could do is to get rid of this attention because nothing was done wrong, and we don't need the media building this up."

A Carson campaign spokesman said the campaign is still searching for a successor to fill the position in a "voluntary role." A source familiar with the campaign's thinking told POLITICO that Mike Murray, a veteran of direct mail fundraising with a long history of campaign work, is under consideration for either a temporary or permanent appointment.

Parker, who recently said he’d take a bullet for Carson, can’t seem to fathom the fury that’s suddenly coming his way.

“Everything I’ve done has been on Dr. Carson’s behalf. Everything I do was with his approval and his blessing,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that everybody in leadership, like any company, would always agree.”

For every donor who might complain, he said, others would vouch for his integrity. One is Bill Millis, another North Carolina fundraiser who helped lead Carson’s campaign until he departed in November over strategic disagreements. Millis called Parker “a good man, who is committed to Dr. Carson.”

“I don’t know all of the in’s and out’s relative to expenses, and would certainly accept that some expenses may have been unnecessary,” he wrote in an email, “but [the] majority was necessary in order to keep Dr. Carson and his message visible.”

Parker also pointed to a story in the Alabama-based news outlet Yellowhammer that he said praised his performance. The article featured a comment from an anonymous source who said Parker had done a “good job” for him and ripped into “professional political consultants” running the campaign. “Unfortunately for the $10 and $20 and $50 donors who believe in Dr. Carson, only a fraction of their money has been put to good use,” the source told Yellowhammer.

Parker claims his Mobile-based team helped Carson, a political novice, raise $1 million a month in the fall, a powerhouse operation built from scratch that’s expanding as the Republican nominating contest nears. Large-donor fundraising, he said, increased 10-fold from May, when he joined the campaign, and the ratio of his expenses to contributions is in the single digits. Parker said he has added state finance chairs around the country in recent weeks. He told POLITICO his team spent funds appropriately and that he began collecting a salary only this month.

Campaign management experts said it is unusual for finance chairmen to receive any salary.

“Usually a chair is not somebody that’s getting paid to do that job,” said Katie Packer Gage, former deputy manager of Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “It’s somebody that has relationships with lots of donors, and so it’s a more symbolic kind of role that demonstrates that somebody in the donors’ peer group is on board.”

Ray Washburne, national finance chairman of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's campaign, said paying a finance chairman defeats the purpose of the role.

“If they think I’m getting a scrape on the money as a finance chairman, you lose all your credibility,” he said. “When you’re raising money $2,700 a person, someone making $20,000 a month — that’s eight to 10 maxed-out donors.” Washburne said the value of a finance chairman is the ability to make a “peer to peer sale” with fellow donors. He pointed to Marco Rubio’s finance chairman, Wayne Berman, and Jeb Bush’s finance chairman, Woody Johnson. “If there was a financial gain for us on it, it’s harder to look somebody in the eye to raise money.”

But Parker said he’s an exception because, unlike other finance chairmen, he’s working in the role full time, and he said the campaign felt more comfortable compensating him for that time.

“It’s 100 percent what I do. I put all my business holdings on hold,” said Parker, who advised C-Spire, the tech firm that acquired his company, Callis Communications, two years ago. “I started this on May 5. I have been home an average of four days a month.”

In a statement, the campaign confirmed its rationale for providing Parker with a salary. “After volunteering full-time for several months, the campaign asked Dean to establish a contract relationship, so that they could properly reimburse for expenses,” said spokesman Larry Ross.

Parker said he emphasizes frugality and finding good, “cautious” deals to ensure donors’ dollars are wisely spent.

In some ways, the criticism of Parker is classic backbiting from a campaign in turmoil. Many of Carson’s senior staff quit the campaign on New Year’s Eve, citing a dysfunctional organization with tangled chains of command — Carson had tepidly signaled a coming shakeup — but Parker stayed. He said he’s been a “trusted adviser” to Carson for a couple of years, though he added that he had nothing to do with the campaign shake-up.

“The shake-up was all him,” Parker said, referring to Carson. “I was sad to see some of the guys go.”

The criticisms of Parker come as Carson attempts to revive his campaign in Iowa, which will become the first state to weigh in on the Republican presidential nominating contest on Feb. 1. Polls show he’s still tied for third there, and he’s counting on a top-three finish to sustain his campaign through February.

Documents leaked to The Wall Street Journal suggested the campaign has blown through tens of millions of dollars, primarily on cumbersome direct-mail and telephone operations, eliminating the financial cushion that would help Carson carry through the early-voting states. Carson raised a combined $43 million in the last six months of 2015, but, by some accounts, he started the year with less than $10 million on hand. Though Carson led presidential polls heading into November, his campaign tumbled amid questions about Carson’s inspiring personal narrative and his readiness to handle foreign policy issues.



That’s why sources who voiced complaints to POLITICO worried that Parker’s finance operation is no longer sustainable.



In the three months ending on Oct. 1, the most recent quarter for which public filings are available, the campaign paid $145,000 in costs it described as “travel” to Parker's firm, Vita Capital. Parker said those payments actually covered fundraising expenses.

He said the campaign did use his private plane to shuttle around Carson and staff, but he said those billings went through a “third party.” He said his plane’s services were offered at fair market value after a competitive bidding process.





At the campaign’s recommendation, Parker said, the expenses he and his team incurred were charged on the credit card of Vita Capital, and he received reimbursements. Public filings show the payments went through two companies: Vita Capital and Communication Management Source, which is managed by Parker’s wife, Joanne. An $18,000 rent payment to the firm KP Investment, a limited liability company formed in 2004, traces to Parker, too.

Parker said the rent payment reflected the cost of a six-month lease, furniture and utilities for a property in which he is a partner. He said he may have made “three or four thousand dollars” in fees.

In fact, much of the finance operation Parker built in Mobile is difficult to decipher from campaign filings. Nearly everyone on his staff set up a separate LLC after joining the campaign and received consulting payments in the quarter that ended Oct. 1. LLCs like Interim C, DB Operations, and Synergy Networks were established explicitly for the campaign and trace back to individuals who were paid as finance consultants.

Mary Broughton, who lists her occupation as a substitute teacher and graduated from Liberty University in 2014, collected nearly $15,000, through MC Consulting, established in June. Rachel Howat, who was a Mobile County nutritionist until joining the campaign in June as “finance operations director,” collected more than $15,200 through The Amna Agency. A further $8,000 flowed in September to Interim C, a Michigan-based LLC whose manager, Kevin Demery, used to work with Parker at Callis Communications. Demery lists his title as the campaign’s national vice chairman of finance.



The team also reported a $644 “finance consulting” payment to Haley Ikner, a University of Mobile junior and Miss Alabama aspirant who worked as an intern. “I admire Dr. Carson and what he stands for, as well, so it seemed perfect. I got the internship and did various tasks such as calling sponsors to thank them for their support to letting them know when Dr. Carson would be in an area near him,” she said.



In November, Parker also hired part-timer Halie Biggs, a North Carolina-based model who began pursuing a business administration degree at North Carolina State University this year. A picture on Biggs’ Twitter feed shows her with Parker, Carson’s son Ben Carson Jr., and singer/songwriter will.i.am at a dinner hosted by Segway inventor Dean Kamen.



Parker said the campaign encouraged supplying employees with separate LLCs, allowing them to work under contract rather than as official staff. Parker attributed the “young or inexperienced” nature of his team to the fact that he’s running a “grass-roots” operation.

“We didn’t have a donor list. We couldn’t afford high-dollar fundraisers,” Parker said, adding that when he joined the campaign in May, it was bringing in $100,000 from major donors each month — a number that’s since grown 10-fold. The Carson campaign didn’t respond to questions about Parker’s assertion that it encouraged the use of contract employees, recommended use of personal credit cards and encouraged Parker to accept a salary.

Conflicts with Parker flared into the open last month after a dispute with Terry Giles, who chaired the campaign in the spring but was elbowed out over strategic differences. Late last month, Giles sent a scorching letter to Carson, his wife Candy and a dozen senior campaign officials in which he called Parker a liar. In the letter, obtained by POLITICO, Giles said Parker, while at a gathering of Houston donors, blamed him for a leak to The Wall Street Journal that included damaging revelations about the campaign’s finances. Parker alleged that Giles had tricked Millis into revealing the damaging information over the phone while a Journal reporter was listening in.

Giles denied the charge and wrote that he was incensed Parker would make the accusation in his hometown. “After Bill Millis communicated with the donor/fundraiser and explained that this story was a complete fabrication and that no such thing happened, I was able to calm down the rightfully upset donor,” he wrote. “But that does not take away the fact that the campaign came into my city and told a group of donor/fundraisers (and folks who are Carson supporters because of Kalli and myself, lies about me which made it appear that I was undercutting the campaign.”

Asked about the incident, Giles said he would neither confirm nor deny it, but added, “I’m not a fan of Dean Parker.”

Parker acknowledged the dust-up but said he apologized a day after seeing Giles’ letter and sent a letter of regret to the donors he met with, arguing that his comment had been “taken out of context” and that he shouldn’t have discussed the episode at all.

For the most part, Parker expressed surprise that he has become the target of so much vitriol and described a “great relationship” with Carson’s senior aides — including some who are no longer with the campaign. He added that he hopes to put to bed any questions about his use of campaign funds and his relationship with donors. “If there’s not a story here, let’s not write it,” he urged. But he insisted he was happy to answer questions raised by his critics.

“We just want the truth reported. I’m giving it to you,” he said. “We have nothing to hide.”