Despite uproar, N.Carolina governor rivals use 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.