Ralph Campbell Jr.

Campbell decided to run for the office of North Carolina State Auditor in 1992, declaring his candidacy in January.[13] Facing two other candidates in the Democratic Party's primary election, he took a leave of absence from his job in the Department of Insurance and travelled across the state to hold meetings and rallies.[8] He won the May 5 primary, securing the Democratic nomination with 48 percent of the vote,[14][15] and faced Republican Vernon Abernethy in the general election. Campbell pledged that if he was elected he would create an advisory council for the office and establish a technical assistance program to educate officials in other state agencies on cost-controlling methods.[16] Abernethy emphasized his Certified Public Accountant status and criticized Campbell for lacking accounting experience.[17] Campbell won the general election on November 3, saying, "How sweet it is to be standing with my fellow North Carolinians on the edge of tomorrow [...] We have chosen hope over fear."[18] His victory made him the first black person ever elected to a statewide executive office in North Carolina.[19]

Campbell was sworn in as North Carolina State Auditor on January 9, 1993.[20] During his first term he equipped office staff with desktop computers and field auditors with laptop computers[21] and pushed for the implementation of an entirely digital auditing system. He served as head of the state's Information Resource Management Commission and helped determine its policy towards the internet[22] and later reviewed the government's response to the Year 2000 problem.[23] In May 1995 he was involved in a car accident while driving his government-issued vehicle. Campbell was initially charged with driving while impaired, but the police later determined that his blood alcohol content was lower than the level necessary for such a case and dropped the charges while also finding the driver of the other vehicle at fault for the collision.[24]

Ralph Campbell ran for re-election in 1996, pledging that if he re-secured his office he would continue to enhance its technological capabilities. He was challenged by Republican candidate Jack Daly, a law student.[25] Daly and his campaign official, Nate Pendley, accused Campbell of misusing his state vehicle and criticized him for the 1995 collision, saying he should resign from office.[26] Campbell rejected the allegations.[27] He ultimately won re-election with less than 50 percent of the vote, receiving the fewest votes among the Democratic candidates on the Council of State.[28]

Campbell conducted several high-profile audits during his tenure, occasionally annoying government workers and other Democrats.[29] He released a critical audit of North Carolina's mental health services in early 2000, for which he received broad praise, and the report led to the creation of a legislative panel to study the matter. In June he audited the expenses of State Attorney General Mike Easley, who used official funds to pay for public service announcements. The audit cleared Easley of any wrongdoing, but Campbell was accused of protecting Easley by his political opponents, since Easley was a candidate for governor.[30]

For the 2000 Democratic primary contest for state auditor, Pendley recruited a homeless man and client of Daly, Kenneth Campbell, to challenge Ralph Campbell for the nomination. Daly filed Kenneth Campbell's candidacy and paid the associated fees.[31][32] Daly renewed his candidacy for the auditor's office, and sponsored another former client to run in the primary.[33] Ralph Campbell stated that Kenneth had been deceived, and the latter's candidacy was invalidated by election officials after one asserted that the move was done to confuse voters in the primary.[31] Campbell attended the 2000 Democratic National Convention as a delegate.[34] For his own 2000 campaign, he collected a significant amount of his campaign contributions from Atlanta-area donors, where his brother Bill was serving as mayor. His Republican opponent in the general election, Les Merritt, attempted to tie Ralph Campbell to a federal corruption investigation into Atlanta's city government and turned over his campaign financial disclosures to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Campbell's campaign officials denied any wrongdoing.[35] He won his third term over Merritt in November with 51 percent of the vote.[36]

In late 2001 Campbell accused the North Carolina Technological Development Authority, a nonprofit designed to promote small technology companies, of wasting its money on frivolous travel and entertainment expenses and excessive salaries. As a result, Easley—who was governor—cut off the organization from state funds and it later filed for bankruptcy.[37] In May 2001, the auditor's office began exploring the cybersecurity vulnerabilities of state computer networks.[38] In December 2002 Campbell was elected president of the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council.[39] The following year his office reported on the John A. Hyman Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Congressman Frank Ballance, accusing it of financial improprieties. The audit led to state and federal investigations, and as a result the auditor's office lobbied for increased oversight into nonprofits which received state funds, including the implementation of new financial reporting requirements and the hiring of additional auditors.[40] Following an audit of state juvenile justice facilities, the Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention adopted one of Campbell's recommendations and declared that it would create task forces to review the department's reporting and investigative procedures for incidents of abuse.[41]

In March 2004 Campbell released an audit of the North Carolina State Ports Authority which led its chief executive officer to resign and the board of directors to revise its rules regarding credit cards and travel expenses.[42][43] The following month the auditor's office released a report which accused the North Carolina Medicaid program of misallocating $414 million in federal funding.[44] Campbell sent the audit to state and federal prosecutors for review, and said, "This is the most damaging audit that we have ever had to release in my 11, 12 years as state auditor."[45] The audit led to a public dispute between Campbell and Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Carmen Hooker Odom.[44] Odom denounced the findings during a North Carolina General Assembly committee hearing, asserted that what problems existed would have been fixed if Campbell had followed-up on issues his office discovered in 1997, and stated that she wished to return to the "very good relationship" she had with Campbell before the release of the audit. Campbell followed her presentation by saying, "Let me thank the secretary for her magnanimous gesture of working together as I pull the daggers and the arrows out of my back from the beginning part of that presentation."[46] His comment elicited gasps from the audience, and after he summarized the report, the legislators intensively questioned Odom on the spending of the Medicaid funds.[46] In June he was elected president of the National State Auditors Association.[47]

Merrit challenged Campbell again for the auditor's office in the 2004 election. He criticized Campbell for not fully uncovering the Medicaid problems in 1997.[45] The North Carolina Republican Party attacked Campbell's connections to his brother Bill, who had been indicted in the course of the federal investigation on corruption charges.[47] Campbell lost re-election in November, with Merritt receiving about 28,000 more votes. Campbell believed that his race and some of his audits played a role in his electoral defeat. His office performed about 3,600 audits during his tenure.[48] His tenure ended on January 15, 2005.[49][50] Another black person was not elected to serve on the Council of State until Mark Robinson was elected Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina in 2020.[51]