GOP consultant: Sen. Wesley Meredith needs to address welfare fraud allegations
Published October 4, 2014
by Paul Woolverton, Fayetteville Observer, October 3, 2014.
A Republican political consultant thinks Republican state Sen. Wesley Meredith needs to quickly address allegations and a possible investigation of whether he and his former wife fraudulently obtained government welfare benefits for their son 18 years ago.
"You can't shuffle it under the rug," said the consultant, Carter Wrenn of Raleigh.
But Democratic consultant Gary Pearce said the allegations won't have much effect on the November election unless Democratic challenger Billy Richardson - or his allies - spend sufficient money on television ads and mailers to tell the voters about the alleged fraud.
The allegations come from Richardson and from Wesley Meredith's former wife, Beth Longbottom Meredith, in a state Senate district that the Democrats think they can take from the Republicans.
Richardson on Tuesday produced documents in an effort to show that Wesley and Beth Meredith in 1996, when they were still married, had too much income to qualify for Medicaid, the government program for people too poor to afford health insurance. The documents include copies of the son's Medicaid cards and the Merediths' income tax records.
Beth Meredith on Wednesday said in a statement sent to The Fayetteville Observer that she and Wesley sought the Medicaid together from the Department of Social Services. A lawyer told her later, she said, that this may have been wrong.
Through a Republican spokesman, Meredith declined an interview request Thursday. In interviews in September, Wesley Meredith said he did not remember whether his son was enrolled on Medicaid. On Wednesday, he said his son should not have been "dragged into this campaign by Billy Richardson."
The issue is relevant, said Wrenn, a longtime Republican political consultant who used to run U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms' campaigns.
"You've got the documents that show his son was on Medicaid. And you've got documents showing he was earning more money than would allow his son to qualify for Medicaid. That's a legitimate thing for his opponent to bring up," Wrenn said. "And what his responsibility is at that point is to explain it, answer it. If he made a mistake, he needs to say it: 'I made a mistake.'
"If there's an explanation for what happened, he ought to give the explanation," Wrenn said.
And if Meredith really doesn't remember what happened, "that's tough for him, because that's not the most credible answer. It may be the truthful answer, but it's what you hear a lot of times from politicians who just don't want to answer," Wrenn said.
Before the allegations were made public, Richardson was down by 14 points in this race, according to a survey conducted in late September.
Could the fraud allegations put Richardson ahead?
"If Richardson has the resources now to tell more voters about this, I think it totally upends it," Democratic consultant Pearce said. "They struck a gusher here."
But unless Richardson and political organizations allied with the Democrats buy enough advertising to spread the word, the issue is unlikely to give him much of a boost, Pearce said.
"He can't just assume people are going to see it on the news and read about," Pearce said. "He's going to have to take it to Meredith, and it seems to me he's got a pretty powerful thing to say there."
According to the most recent publicly available data, Richardson's campaign had about $80,000 as of June 30, while Meredith's had $278,000.
Richardson in an interview Wednesday was not prepared to say how he would use the allegations against Meredith, but it's clear that they likely will come up.
"Whatever we do, we want to do it with dignity and we want to do it with the absolute truth, and not play games, not play fast and loose with the facts, but do it factually and truthfully," Richardson said.
Voters will know the allegations are coming from Richardson and reject them, said Ray Martin, director of the Republican Senate Caucus.
"I think voters will look at this kind of gutter politics and see Billy Richardson for who is," Martin said. "And that's a slick trial lawyer, a dirty campaigner who's dragging family and children into this race, and really breaking his promise to stick to the issues."
Meredith "will continue to run an aggressive campaign" that will, for example, continue to point out that Richardson while in office in the state House in the 1990s voted for a legislative pay and pension increase, Martin said.
