Josh Stein Misled Media On In-State Finances | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the John Locke Foundation. The author of this post is Jim Stirling.

    North Carolina Gubernatorial Candidate Josh Stein misled the media last month on his donations to his campaign, misattributing roughly $1 million in out-of-state funding as in-state. Prior to submitting his report to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, Josh Stein's campaign produced a press release claiming that, out of the $6 million he raised in the first half of 2023, 89 percent of all contributions were from North Carolina.


    While Stein broke fundraising records in North Carolina's Gubernatorial race with his fundraising at this stage of the election, he did not submit his official campaign finance report till the day before the deadline for mid-year reports. Stein's mid-year report shows that only 71.25 percent of his trackable contributions came from North Carolina. Even in the most favorable scenario where all "Aggregated Individual Contributions" came from North Carolina, the breakdown of in-state financing would be less than 72 percent.


    Even when pulling his total contributions since 2021, Stein's claim cannot be substantiated.


    No matter how you cut it, Stein's claim about his in-state finances was false and misled the media and the public by more than $1 million. This is not the first issue Stein has had with his most recent campaign finance report. Earlier this week, it was discovered that his committee had been scammed for over $50,000 in campaign funds in January.