By Matthew Langston and Tyler Musialowski
The Washington Free Beacon, which is considered a conservative outlet by many, posted an article last month that claimed Dan McCready, the Democratic candidate for the special election in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, overpaid for land from a future campaign donor.
UNC FactCheck decided to look into the situation to see if the article’s claims about McCready’s land purchase were accurate.
First, let’s begin with the details of the land purchase.
The property McCready purchased is a large tract of land in Rutherford County that is rural and mostly wooded. When looking at satellite imagery, there appears to be two outbuildings on the land, and there are no other buildings on the property.
McCready is not listed as the property owner on Rutherford County’s property lookup. Rather, a company called DL Land Ventures, LLC is listed as the property owner.
According to records on the North Carolina Secretary of State website, the limited-liability company was formed on July 28, 2016, and it is listed as being a land holdings company. McCready and his wife are listed on reports as the only company officials, and McCready’s home address is listed as the company’s principal office.
The deed to acquire the land, which totals about 528 acres, was filed on July 29, 2016.
According to Rutherford County’s online property search, the total assessed value for the land today is just under $595,000, while McCready paid just over $1.2 million for the land.
McCready purchased the land from John Leekley, who still owns two other tracts of land in Rutherford County that total about 80 acres.
With these details noted, let’s explore Leekley’s background and his donations to McCready’s congressional campaign.
Leekley, who is listed on property records as living in Michigan, retired in 2008 from the Masco Corporation, where he was a senior vice president and general counsel.
The Masco Corporation describes itself as “one of the world’s largest manufacturers of brand-name products for the home improvement and new home construction markets.”
According to the Center for Responsive Politics’ online donor lookup, Leekley has made two $1,000 donations to McCready, though neither donation was made during McCready’s initial 2018 congressional campaign.
Leekley’s first donation was made on Dec. 13, 2018, which was after news began to surface of an illegal ballot fraud scheme allegedly perpetrated by a political operative working for then-Republican candidate Mark Harris.
Leekley’s second donation was made on March 21, 2019, about a month after the State Board of Elections called for a new election in the 9th District following its investigation into the ballot fraud scheme. That same board met in early March and decided on the dates for the district’s new primary and general election.
Since 1992, Leekley has donated to several Republican candidates and groups. Besides for a donation in 2002 to then-Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), Leekley had never donated to a Democrat until his donations to McCready. So, is anything unusual about the details of McCready’s land purchase?
So, is anything unusual about the details of McCready’s land purchase?
McCready’s purchase of the land through an LLC might seem odd, but it seems that action was not unusual and was most likely done for legal reasons.
Kathleen Thomas, an associate professor at UNC’s law school, said the advantages of buying land through an LLC are primarily legal in nature.
“To do any investment through an LLC will offer you legal protections,” said Thomas.
Andra Ghent, an associate professor at UNC’s business school, also said purchasing property through an LLC is not unusual and would protect buyers from “personal recourse” if a mortgage was used to help pay for the property.
The issue of why McCready paid over $1.2 million for the land if its value was assessed to be about $595,000 is also important to review.
The Washington Free Beacon’s article says that government property appraisals for tax purposes are not always as accurate as appraisals for private transactions. It also mentions a disclaimer from Rutherford County about differences between sale price values and assessed values.
Ghent said, “$2,300 per acre is pretty cheap.” Ghent’s areas of expertise include real estate finance and development. “It’s not an unreasonable price, for sure.”
When asked what she thought McCready might want to do with the land, Ghent said that it was unlikely he would try and develop it into something like a subdivision due to the land being in an area far from any major cities.
Ghent said McCready may just be planning to build a personal residence on the property or could have something related to solar energy in mind.
The Washington Free Beacon’s article also includes comments from Kendra Arnold, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, which has been called a conservative watchdog group by some media outlets.
Arnold questioned the difference between the land’s assessed value and its sale price. She also suggested that McCready’s reporting of the land’s value being between $500,001 and $1 million was inaccurate on his congressional disclosure report.
“One important requirement of the personal financial disclosure is that our Members of Congress list their assets at the correct fair market value,” Arnold said in the article. “Without further explanation, it clearly appears Mr. McCready did not correctly value this asset.”
The House Ethics Committee’s instructions for financial disclosure reports say that the filing person should indicate the “period-end value” for each asset they disclose.
The instructions go on to say that it is acceptable for a person to provide “a good faith estimate of the fair market value of an asset if the exact value is neither known nor easily obtainable.”
If the land’s assessed value is representative of the land’s period-end value, then McCready listed the right value range for this land on his report.
The Washington Free Beacon said in its story that the McCready campaign “did not return requests for comment about the land deal.”
When UNC FactCheck reached out to the McCready campaign for comment on this story and asked what McCready’s plans are for the land, a member of his communications team said, “At this time, the campaign has no comment.”
