Senate leader Phil Berger’s primary campaign raised 34 times as much money as his challenger, Rockingham County Sam Page, but Page’s candidacy was boosted by four outside groups — most of which haven’t disclosed much about their donors and spending.
Page leads Berger by just 23 votes with a recount pending, and Page likely benefitted from a barrage of TV ads and mailers attacking the powerful Republican lawmaker. That ad spending from outside groups totaled more than $800,000, a figure that could be significantly higher because only some of the spending has been disclosed so far.
One of the groups, Guilford-Rockingham Alliance, has not yet filed required disclosure reports with the State Board of Elections. The deadline for independent expenditure groups to file their first-quarter reports was Feb. 24. The other group, Piedmont Accountability Coalition, only filed its report two weeks after the election ended.
Both groups were run by Patrick Sebastian, a Republican consultant who is now serving as a “post-election advisor” to Page. Sebastian’s firm, Tar Heel Targeting, has previously worked for a variety of Republican campaigns, including those of former Congressman Renee Ellmers, Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey, Rep. Tim Reeder and former Gov. Pat McCrory, who is Sebastian’s uncle.
Here’s what we know about the two groups run by Sebastian, as well as two other organizations that ran ads against Berger during the campaign:
Guilford-Rockingham Alliance: The Greensboro-based group was formed in January and spent at least $430,000 on TV ads and mailers criticizing Berger. One of the ads called his proposal for new casinos “crooked” and accused him of “using campaign donations to pay for real estate” while hiring his wife for a government job.
As of March 18, it had filed paperwork with the State Board of Elections disclosing the ad buys — made through Sebastian’s firm — but no disclosures that list donors. Sebastian referred questions about the group’s disclosure reports to its generic email address.
Piedmont Accountability Coalition: The group formed on Jan. 29 using the address of the Apex accountant who serves as its treasurer. After WUNC News asked questions about the group’s failure to file disclosure reports before the Feb. 24 deadline, it filed its first-quarter report on Tuesday.
That report lists Sheila Mikhail of Hillsborough as the “controlling entity” who contributed $225,000 of the $350,000 the group raised by Feb. 14. Mikhail is the founder of multiple biotechnology companies and is an advocate for breast cancer screenings.
She is registered as an unaffiliated voter, and records show she voted in this year’s Democratic primary in Orange County. She has previously donated to six political campaigns, all of them for Democrats like Gov. Josh Stein and former Gov. Roy Cooper. Mikhail is featured in one of Piedmont Accountability’s TV ads, which claims that Berger “blocked a Republican bill to pay for expanded cancer screenings.” The ads were booked through Sebastian’s firm.
Asked why he got involved on behalf of groups opposing the powerful Senate leader, Sebastian said, “I've not been a fan of Sen. Berger for a while, and I think it was time for a change. And yes, I had several people tell me I was being silly to get involved in this. ‘Why would you do this? You're going to cost yourself a lot of business.’ And I probably did, honestly.”
Two other donors contributed to the group: John Burress of Winston-Salem and Richard Jude Samulski, co-founder of the pharmaceutical company AskBio. Samulski is a registered Democrat, while Burress is registered unaffiliated and frequently votes in Republican primaries.
NC Families for Prosperity: This group formed in September as a 501(c)4 nonprofit, which means it can engage in legislative advocacy and doesn’t have to disclose donors. It created at least one ad and website criticizing Berger for redrawing congressional districts and “slow walking” Helene recovery funding.
A few days after the election, the group filed new paperwork with the N.C. Secretary of State changing its address to the headquarters of Maven Strategies, a Raleigh consulting firm that mostly works for Democrats. Its contact is now listed as Owen Berger, a former staffer for the N.C. Democratic Party.
The group’s ad campaign wrapped up in the fall. Sebastian says the group is not connected to his organizations.
NC Partnership for Good Government: The group’s initial filings list the same Chapel Hill attorney as Families for Prosperity. It created an ad and website that blasted Berger for his long career in the Senate and failure to get a budget passed. Like Families for Prosperity, it’s also a 501(c)4 nonprofit that does not have to file disclosures with the State Board of Elections.
Did groups work with Page’s campaign?
Independent expenditure groups are legally barred from coordinating directly with the candidates and their campaigns.
While he’s now working directly with Page in a “post-election advisor” role, Sebastian says neither he, nor the outside groups he worked with, coordinated with the Page campaign until after Election Day.
Michael Weisel, an election law attorney who is not involved with the Berger-Page race, said the prohibition on coordination only applies prior to the election.
“Provided there was no interaction or coordination between the IE entity staff and the candidate or campaign staff during the campaign period, once Election Day has occurred, former IE people who had been 'walled off,' can talk with the candidate and campaign staff,” Weisel told WUNC. “Discussions about electoral expenditures or action prior to the day after Election Day are prohibited and illegal under both N.C. and federal law.”
Page’s campaign ran on a far smaller budget than the two main outside groups, his campaign finance filings show, raising $81,000 by mid-February.
His reports list no staff working on the campaign, and the only payment to a campaign management consultant was a $3,000 check in February to Cockeysville, Maryland-based consultant Adam Wood. He worked for Page while simultaneously campaigning for a state Senate seat in Maryland, where the primary will be held in June. Wood has North Carolina ties, including time working for former Congresswoman Ellmers.
Sebastian says Page’s campaign was largely volunteer-driven, including a big unpaid assist from Doug Isley, a business owner from Rockingham County who was also involved in anti-casino advocacy efforts.
Page bought some ads of his own but only spent about $30,000 in total, the campaign finance report shows.
Berger backers spent far more
Even combined with spending from the outside pro-Page groups, supporters of Berger’s campaign spent significantly more on the race.
The outside pro-Berger group NC True Conservatives spent at least $6 million on ads attacking Page. The group is run by longtime Republican consultant Larry Shaheen, and the ads were produced by two political consultants who previously worked for Berger, Jim Blaine and Ray Martin.
Most of the group’s funding comes from the “Good Government Coalition,” which in turn is primarily funded by the Republican State Leadership Committee, the national association for GOP state-level elected officials. Berger serves on the group’s executive committee. An analysis by campaign finance watchdog Bob Hall found that most of the money flowing through the “Good Government Coalition” comes from “corporations and trade associations like PhRMA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”
Another group called “Citizens for NC Jobs Action PAC,” which is closely connected to the NC Chamber, spent at least $300,000 on ads promoting Berger, most of them produced by Martin and Blaine’s firm.
Other pro-Berger ads aired on TV from an Alexandria, Va.-based group called “American Conservative Fund.” Campaign finance records show that group is largely funded by the sports betting operator Draft Kings (the state Senate under Berger voted to legalize sports betting in 2024). The group also campaigned in support of numerous other Republican legislators in contested primaries this year.
All that spending came in addition to the more than $2.4 million Berger’s campaign spent on the race, making the race by far the most expensive state Senate race in North Carolina history.
