Now we have a article in this weeks Rhino Times with a title "Hyde Raffle Report Still Raises Questions", CLICKHERE . In this article John Hammer had this to say:
"The problems started when the raffle was won by Hyde's sister Becky Smith, a fact that he would not confirm until last week when he was told that it was a matter of public record in a memo from the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
And it gets worse. Hyde's sister didn't buy a ticket and didn't want the $5,000 that she won in the raffle, so the campaign never awarded a prize and just kept the $5,000. The campaign has raised about $28,000 total, so $5,000 is a considerable amount of the campaign finances and, according to the reports currently filed, there was no $5,000 payout and no $5,000 donation. "
Finally we find out that Becky Smith is Jeff Hyde's sister, but wait it gets better. Later in the article here is what was written:
"This week Hyde said he and his wife bought 10 tickets, his father bought one ticket and a cousin bought two tickets. They all had the last name Hyde and accounted for 13 of the 83 raffle tickets sold. Hyde said that in case one of the tickets bought by a family member won, they thought it would be better if the winner announced was not named Hyde, so they put his sister's name on all 13 tickets. She had a pretty good chance of winning, since her name was on 13 of 83 tickets, or almost 16 percent of the tickets."
Now we see that he wants to put every person with a last name hyde under the name of his sister becky smith for the raffle. If we take what was said above in that jeff and his wife bought 10 tickets then on his campaign returns it does show $1,000 between the 2 of them but it was not designated for raffle as some other people who did give to his campaign in the returns. Also , if the raffle tickets cost $100 a piece and we see that his father bought a raffle ticket but on his campaign returns it shows a Richard C. Hyde from Gastonia N.C. with a $27.00 contribution well below the $100 raffle contribution he was advertising. If you look at his blog he had a campaign to get $27 by the 27th for the 27th district of April not for his raffle. So if Richard Hyde is his father then he didn't give to the raffle either but was counted in the raffle.
When you have contests and other raffles there are plenty of rules like for example no family members or people who work for the companies can win prizes or raffles. This raffle is a great example of why no family members should be able to win and Jeff Hyde knew better but has wanted to hide this for a long time now. All he needed to do is come clean at the beginning and plenty of us who look at campaign laws and returns would have said ok it was a novice mistake but now we see there is more to the story from the Rhino Times and below is the scribd version of the Jeff Hyde's campaign returns with the raffle members who did give on his returns
jeff hyde committee 2010 campaign report second quarter
North Carolina campaign laws doesn't talk about using raffles for your campaigns but even in Guilford County we have had a few others use a raffle to get campaign contributions from Trudy Wade to Lisa Ingle Clapp. If we can consider what has happened in the Jeff Hyde raffle and what has not been reported on his campaign returns where we all know that he needs to amend his returns and show that his sister did give a $5,000 contribution for winning the raffle then this would have cleared up all of this a long time ago.
It also might be time to let our state legislatures know that we might need some ground rules on who can win from campaign raffles or if you do have a raffle to get campaign money then the campaigner and his family members cannot be a part of the raffle for reasons like what we have seen in this issue with the Jeff Hyde Committee.
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