Real estate wallets opened wide in Charlotte’s city elections
Real-estate and construction-related donors pitched in 39% of donations in City Council elections last month
This article appeared in the Sept. 20, 2019, edition of the Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter on local business news. Sign up for free here.
As city government primary elections entered the final stretch last month, some incumbents benefited from big infusions of money from donors connected to the real estate and construction industries.
Four of those candidates — Ed Driggs, James Mitchell, Larken Egleston and LaWana Mayfield — took in more than half of their August donations from those industries. Driggs, Mitchell and Egleston won. Mayfield lost.
Overall, a Ledger analysis of campaign-finance data shows that 39% of donations to City Council and mayoral candidates in August came from contributors affiliated with real estate and construction. Development is big business in Charlotte. It has been for a while. But it doesn’t account for 2/5 of the local economy, which suggests that developers, builders and other real-estate interests play an outsized role in getting local candidates elected.
Ely Portillo, assistant director at UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute, explains that people connected to the real-estate industry have incentives to donate because so much of their business is regulated locally. Just as big banks donate to federal candidates because they are regulated from Washington, real-estate types give locally because that’s where the action is — from rezonings, to new ordinances on signs and trees to new rules for developing land near transit lines. Those rules don’t always turn out how developers want, but they perceive that it’s smart to be engaged in politics.
“If you want to build in Charlotte, you have to play by the Charlotte rules,” Portillo tells the Ledger. “They have a strong incentive to have a seat at the table.”
The Ledger examined the 541 donations listed on the most recent financial-disclosure forms of Charlotte mayoral and City Council candidates, which generally covered contributions made in the month of August. Of the $187,000 in donations, more than $72,000 came from individuals and political-action committees linked to real estate or construction. They included architects, real estate brokers and executives with big companies such as Lincoln Harris, Childress Klein and Allen Tate.
The candidate who raised the most from the industry wasEiselt, who took in $16,750 from real-estate and construction-related donors in August, or 32% of her haul. Eiselt, who also raised the most money overall of any candidate, won in last week’s Democratic primary for an at-large council seat.Driggs, who won in the Republican district primary in the Ballantyne area, had the highest percentage of real-estate donations among major candidates, with 70% of his $14,100 in August coming from the industry.
Several real-estate-related donors liked to spread the money around:
- The biggest single industry donor for the month was the N.C. Realtors PAC, which gave a total of $25,400 to seven candidates, including six incumbents, campaign disclosures show. The six incumbents won in the primaries.
- Daniel Levine of Levine Properties gave a total of $4,950 to five incumbent candidates (Eiselt,Egleston, Matt Newton, Tariq Bokhari andDriggs). Darin Levine, also listed as being with Levine Properties, gave $2,800 to the same five candidates. Lani Levine, listed as having the same address as Daniel Levine, gave $1,400 to three of the candidates.
- Lincoln Harris president Johno Harris donated $2,500 to four incumbent candidates (Eiselt, Egleston, Bokhari and Driggs).
Know more: You can search for candidates’ full campaign-disclosure forms at the State Board of Elections site here.
Rezonings have high approval rates
In a related bit of news, Portillo, of UNCC’s Urban Institute, had a piece this week examining Charlotte rezoning petitions. He found that the overwhelming majority in the last decade were approved: “City Council has only denied 27 rezoning petitions outright, out of more than 1,200 filed.” Putting the number in context, Portillo writes that means “there are more new breweries in Charlotte since 2009 than rezoning petitions turned down.”
Portillo wrote that the approval rate is high because Charlotte is development-friendly and because those who file for rezonings often modify their requests to address the concerns of city staff and council members.
The full article is available here.
Tepper makes big donation to Lyles
One additional interesting tidbit from campaign finance reports: On Aug. 13, Panthers owner David Tepper donated $5,200 to the campaign of Mayor Vi Lyles, who faced only token opposition in her Democratic primary last week and is expected to cruise to victory in November against a little-known Republican opponent.
Tepper’s big donation to Lyles came two weeks after he said he would like a new domed stadium for the Panthers — which would probably require financial participation from the city.
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