Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
A Republican congressional candidate in North Carolina spent the last two years as a top political fundraiser for the real-estate lobby. Now the industry’s trade association is using that money to send her to Washington.
The National Association of Realtors’ political action committee has bought political ads on behalf of just one candidate this year: Leigh Brown, a RE/MAX Realtor and GOP candidate in the special election in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District. And those expenditures have been substantial: The PAC has reported spending nearly $1.3 million on Brown’s behalf so far.