Chickens in Raleigh
The next corruption scandal to hit the North Carolina GOP is already here — and it’s happening out in the open
Mountaire Farms is a private, family-owned poultry corporation — one of the largest in the world. It is based in Arkansas and Delaware. Its President and CEO, Ron Cameron, inherited control of the company, which was originally founded by his grandfather. With around $2.3 billion in revenue, this has made Ron Cameron an incredibly wealthy man. He is also one of the biggest Republican donors in the country, and a major Trump supporter. He is estimated to have spent almost $3 million supporting Donald Trump in the 2016 election alone. (These and other numbers are from a deeply-researched, close profile of Cameron by Jane Meyer in the New Yorker, July 2020).
Ron Cameron is also paying off North Carolina Republicans to steer clear from his poultry business.
Mountaire has large operations in our state: two major processing plants and a feed mill, employing thousands of people in harsh, almost brutal conditions. Mountaire relies heavily on contract migrant labor, which is highly vulnerable, low-paid and easy to exploit — especially with compliant regulators who prefer not to regulate.
Since his company began operations in our state, Cameron has become one of the biggest donors to Republicans in North Carolina. How big? He’s given almost a quarter million dollars in the 2020 cycle alone, including $35,000 to the NCGOP, $10,800 to Dan Forest, and $5,000 each to 36 different Republican legislative candidates — as well as to Steve Troxler, Republican candidate for Commissioner of Agriculture.
Ron Cameron has spent almost a quarter of a million dollars to buy friendly Republicans to protect his business.
To put this in perspective, Duke Energy — one of the NCGOP’s biggest donors — itself has given only a bit more: $245,000 as of Q2 2020. By contrast, Republicans’ favorite target of scorn on the Democratic side, the NCAE (the state teachers’ advocacy organization), has given only $97,000.
Cameron’s pattern of giving also gives clues about his motivations. He does not contribute, for example, to all members of the state House or Senate Agriculture committees — nor even to all the Republican members. Instead, he donates exclusively to candidates in competitive races against Democrats. In other words, he’s been instructed where to send the money by the Republican leadership.
Speaking of that leadership…
How Cameron Bribed Tim Moore
In 2018, the News & Observer documented Speaker Tim Moore’s egregious ethics violations involved in getting the DEQ to give special treatment to a former poultry processing plant in Siler City that Moore himself owned. Through a staffer, Speaker Moore pressured the DEQ to admit the plant — which he owned — into a state program that subsidized the cleanup of its underground storage tanks. After pocketing $22,000 in taxpayer subsidy money, Moore and his business partners turned around and sold the plant — a transaction that could not have taken place before that clearance by DEQ — to… Mountaire Farms.
Moore’s business had paid $85,000 for their purchase of the plant, and sold it for $550,000 just three years later. A 650% profit!
This whole situation should set off anyone’s ethical alarm bells. The North Carolina House Speaker had…
- Pressured a state agency to steer taxpayer subsidy money to his own pocket
- Pressure that same agency to clear the sale of his own property…
- …. to a prominent corporation that was a donor to his party at an exorbitant markup!
Let’s call this what it was. This was a bribe. And it was right out in the open for all to see.
Mountaire and COVID — a perfect storm
Poultry plants are hazardous places where labor regulations are lax and poorly enforced, workers are kept highly vulnerable, and production quotas drive everything away from public scrutiny. A perfect storm for a COVID disaster.
On April 22nd, the N&O reported on the first COVID cluster outbreaks among contract workers at several poultry plants in NC, including at Mountaire’s plant in Siler City. (The same one they bought from Tim Moore.) As noted in the article above, the company hadn’t even begun any protective measures at all until the 2nd week of April — six weeks after Gov. Cooper’s first COVID executive orders declaring a state of emergency. It is only the first of the repeated, massive COVID outbreaks in poultry processing plants across the state resulting from awful working conditions.
(Where on earth was Commissioner of Labor Cherie Berry?)
On April 23rd — the very next day — Cameron started sending huge contributions to NC Republicans. Over the next 8 days alone, he dropped $125,000 in donations to Republicans in the General Assembly, with almost $70,000 coming after that.
Some of the Republicans who received Cameron’s checks in those days include:
- Joyce Krawiec (SD-31)
- Amy Galey (SD-24)
- Bob Steinburg (SD-1)
- Jim Perry (SD-7)
- Lisa Barnes (SD-11)
- Ed Goodwin (HD-1)
- John Szoka (HD-45)
- Jon Hardister (HD-59)
In an amazing coincidence, the General Assembly was just about to convene to hammer out “The COVID-19 Recovery Act,” for obvious reasons a must-pass bill. And with COVID outbreaks at poultry processing facilities dominating headlines, Cameron must have been nervous.
On April 28th, the NCGA convenes in session, where COVID emergency relief is the top issue. SB704, “The COVID-19 Recovery Act,” was the first act filed. But miraculously, the bill shielded poultry producers exactly like Mountaire from civil liability from their employees over COVID.
Republicans, with their solid majorities in both chambers, wrote the bill to suit with only enough Democratic input to satisfy the Governor. It was, after all, a must-pass bill.
For anyone who can add one plus one together, the connection is obvious. For a quarter million dollars in contributions, Ron Cameron dodged a potentially multimillion-dollar COVID liability stemming from his NC plants. He was actively doing this on the national level, too. President Trump, who Cameron had spent millions supporting, issued an executive order labeling slaughterhouse workers as “essential.” The Department of Labor issued a statement saying that their agency wouldn’t even hold employers liable for failing to follow CDC guidelines as long as they made a “good faith” effort — whatever that means.
That’s what Ron Cameron bought with his money.
This is Corruption, Plain and Simple
What do you even say?
If this isn’t the plainest example of corporate corruption since Duke Energy was allowed to shift the cost of its coal ash negligence on to North Carolina customers, I don’t know what is.
The culture of corruption in the North Carolina GOP runs deep. It’s not going to fix itself. Ultimately, it is up to us to decide:
Just how long will the voters tolerate Republican corruption in our legislature?
Voters who will tolerate open corruption like this will tolerate almost anything. Behavior like this is deeply corrosive to our system of government, our faith in institutions and, ultimately, our democracy.
Our system of government is self-correcting — to a point. This November, we have just such an opportunity to self-correct. Here’s hoping we do so.
The Long Leaf Pine Slate is dedicated to breaking the Republican majority in the North Carolina General Assembly. Learn more about us at LongLeafPineslate.org and follow us on Twitter at @ForwardCarolina.
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