N.C. GOP governor, Dem rival using private email

RALEIGH, N.C. - Republican incumbent Pat McCrory and his Democratic opponent in the undecided North Carolina governor’s race have together sent or received hundreds of messages from private email accounts — a sidestep around official communication channels that McCrory’s team blasted as “questionable” in a comparison to Hillary Clinton.

McCrory and Attorney General Roy Cooper — locked in a hotly contested race, with Cooper leading by just over 10,000 votes of more than 4.7 million cast and a state recount possible — each conducted state business via their private emails, the Associated Press learned from documents provided under North Carolina’s public records law.

Staffers for both candidates have lagged in producing the emails as required by state law and won’t say when they will fully comply with AP requests made months ago. The AP sought from both men personal emails they sent or received across state servers between Election Day four years ago and the end of last year.

That delay comes despite an updated email management system installed in 2014 that allows the retrieval of almost any email sent through state government servers within minutes, said Tracy Doaks, the state’s deputy chief information officer.

In response to the AP requests, aides for McCrory and Cooper said they culled the private messages for information that the law allows to be withheld or requires kept secret. It’s impossible to know how much communication they have withheld.

“Our office does not release records without a thorough review for personnel information, attorney-client privileged information, criminal record information, and/or personal financial information,” Cooper spokeswoman Noelle Talley wrote in an email.

In September, McCrory’s staff quit providing the private email records sought by the AP and wouldn’t respond when asked about their progress. Talley said in October that she couldn’t estimate how many more of Cooper’s personal emails involving state business were yet to be produced.

Cooper had sent only a handful of emails using his official state account in the 16 years he has been the state’s top prosecutor. Talley said Cooper prefers communicating in person or by phone but wouldn’t respond when asked whether the Democrat minimized his use of official email in preference to his private account.

A McCrory campaign ad released a week before Election Day said Cooper’s scant use of email through his official account was “questionable.”

“Emails could well be the downfall of Roy Cooper. Surprised? We know of Hillary’s email problems, but it was Roy Cooper who vouched for Hillary’s ‘honesty,’ ” the ad said.