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One of North Carolina’s top fundraisers, State Representative David Miner said in 1996 that he set a $500,000 fundraising goal to “help scare off some people.” Developers are some of the top donors to Miner, who represents a district where rapid development is a major issue. “If you don’t like growth,” Miner said in 1997, “you should move out of Wake County.” As House Commerce Committee chair in 1998, Miner backed a bill to allow liquor to be sold by the glass in conservative Robeson County. Miner moved that bill just five days after one of its chief sponsors, the Chamber of Commerce, took Miner’s suggestion that they hire his campaign consultant as its lobbyist. North Carolina’s Board of Elections ruled in 1998 that the corporate pig industry acted as a political action committee without registering as one. Corporate pig interests countered that the state’s GOP House leadership—including Miner—had passed a moratorium on new hog operations in 1996 to punish the industry for failing to meet its demands for $200,000 in contributions. The Board of Elections could not act on this complaint after the main witness lost his memory of this event. During a contested GOP Congressional primary in 1994, Republican activists who told Miner that they were backing Fred Heineman said that he used a racial slur and retorted, “I don’t see how a Jew from New York can come down here and be a viable candidate.” Miner denies saying this about Heineman, who is Lutheran. Miner has increased his legislative clout in 2003 after the GOP candidate that he backed for House Speaker overcame a competitor backed by a fellow Pioneer in North Carolina’s statehouse (see Edwin McMahan). Both McMahan and Miner were part of a group of North Carolina GOP legislators who urged Bush to run for president in early 1999. Four years later, Miner bragged that he could become a Pioneer in a week’s time. “In my head I know the 100 to 150 people that I will call once a committee is established,” he told Fox News in 2003. “I can make those calls over the period of a week and do what I have to do.”
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Of Special Interest
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| Profile last updated
Dec 12, 2003
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