By Staff
Defends fundraising, questions dredging of his past offenses
Editor’s note: This article is the first of two articles about Greg Dority’s campaign to become North Carolina’s next lieutenant governor.
By DAN PARSONS
Staff Writer
Greg Dority, Washington native and Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, insists that if he does not defeat state Sen. Robert Pittenger in the Republican primary, then he would prevail in a runoff.
Although Dority has dropped in recent public-policy polls when compared to his wealthy rival from Charlotte and despite a scathing article recently published in the Charlotte Observer attacking his credibility, Dority asserted that he would clinch the nomination in the May 6 primary.
Dority has $287.75 in his campaign war chest, according to a Jan. 29 report filed with the N.C. State Board of Elections. Dority said the amount represented only a deposit he made to open a campaign account. He said that his campaign has raised at least $10,000 since the report was filed.
A final disclosure report to the state Board of Elections is due April 28, at which time Dority will officially reveal how much money his campaign has raised.
While $10,000 is a meager sum with which to run a general campaign, Dority said, his campaign would easily raise funds following a victory in next month’s primary.
Another article by the Charlotte Observer brought an incident from Dority’s time as a student at North Carolina State University to light. In 1976, Dority, then a freshman and candidate for a liberal arts senate seat at the university, was charged with stacking the vote in his favor by using other students’ ID cards to vote for himself. He was convicted of the offense by a student judicial board and was placed on probation for two semesters.
In 1981, then-senior Dority was charged with stealing 8,000 copies of the Technician. Dority admitted to the theft and disposing of the newspapers in a trash bin, where they were found. Dority said the decision to steal the newspapers was “a bad decision” that he wouldn’t have made in retrospect. He said the theft was made based on an idealistic principal he felt at the time concerning student elections.
Responding to the Charlotte Observer’s dredging of his offenses while a student at N.C. State, Dority said the article was a “paid advertisement” for his rival, Pittenger.
The incident Dority was referring to was one that jump started his career in the private security field, another aspect of his background on which the Charlotte Observer’s first article took him to task.
For more on Dority’s interview with the Daily News, see future editions.