Money intersects with politics in colorful and confusing ways, and this Durham election cycle is no exception: A graphic spotlighting the seemingly mundane fact that several candidates share the same treasurer has stoked conspiracy theories on social media. The emergence of a mysterious 501(c)(4) that endorsed four candidates prompted those same candidates to commit to rejecting dark money contributions.
Eager for something concrete in the murk, the INDY set out last week to dig into the hard numbers behind Durham’s campaign finance.
We found some initial gaps in the record. City council candidate Shanetta Burris, who is challenging incumbent Mark-Anthony Middleton in Ward 2, had submitted no campaign finance reports during the current election period. And mayoral candidate Anjanée Bell, who is running against incumbent Leonardo Williams, was missing two of four required reports.
After the INDY reached out to Burris and Bell on October 16, both candidates submitted their missing reports to the Durham County Board of Elections within 24 hours. Burris’s campaign manager, Taylor Grady-Daly, wrote in an email to the INDY that Burris’s campaign had been “using a new volunteer treasurer and it took some time for training and getting our processes streamlined.” Grady-Daly became the campaign’s new treasurer on October 22.
Bell, who is acting as her own treasurer, told the INDY in phone calls and a written statement that the electronic filing process has been confusing and that she believed she submitted reports due on September 2 and 29 when she hadn’t.
Staying on top of campaign finance reporting is “part of the due diligence of wanting to be a public official,” says Bob Hall, former executive director of Democracy North Carolina, a government watchdog group.
“They have to figure it out one way or the other,” Hall says. “If they need help, then they should reach out and get help. But it is an important part of the process. It’s a public process, and the public has a right to know.”
In that spirit of transparency, here are our takeaways from the campaign finance reports in the races for Durham mayor and city council seats in Wards 1, 2, and 3.
Kopac’s got fat stacks
The highest fundraiser across all races is city council candidate Matt Kopac, who’s raised over $60,100* in his bid for the Ward 1 seat.
The next highest fundraiser is city council candidate Diana Medoff, at $41,300, who’s running in Ward 3.
That means the most money electionwide is being put toward unseating incumbent city councilors DeDreana Freeman and Chelsea Cook, who are running for reelection in Wards 1 and 3, respectively. Freeman and Cook have each raised around a quarter of what their challengers have raised.
The Ward 2 race shows the lowest fundraising totals. Middleton has raised $9,300. Burris has raised $4,000, the least of any candidate.
In the mayor’s race, Bell** and Williams are on par with each other, with each having raised around $30,000.
Self-care comes first
Cook is their own top donor, having given their campaign $4,000 in cash plus in-kind donations worth $100 and $42, for website expenses.
Bell is also her own top donor, having given her campaign $2,700 in cash plus an in-kind donation worth $800 for event materials.
Freeman, too, is her own top donor, having given her campaign a $3,000 loan. She also contributed $40 worth of office equipment via an in-kind donation.
Meanwhile: Medoff herself was reimbursed $5,900 by her campaign—for yard sign printing, photography, and a table purchased at the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People’s August gala—and Medoff has also donated $500 in cash to her campaign, but she’s not technically her own top donor, as the reimbursements are reported under expenditures. (The gala was hosted by the Durham Committee’s 501(c)4 arm. The organization’s PAC arm, which makes endorsements, operates separately. Medoff’s table purchase is nothing out of the ordinary, according to Hall.)
Real estate players, politicians pepper top donor lists
Medoff’s top donor based on receipts is the NC Realtors PAC, which contributed $2,000 to her campaign.
Middleton boasts a three-way tie for top donors that includes Patrick Byker, a partner at Morningstar Law Firm, which frequently represents developers seeking zoning changes in Durham. Byker gave Middleton $1,000.
Byker also gave $1,000 to Medoff, while the NC Realtors PAC also gave $2,000 to Williams.
Other real estate professionals who show up prominently on donor lists include Joy, Stephen, and Marc Shavitz, real estate investors based in Greensboro who gave Bell a combined $4,700; Henry Hardy, the owner of a construction company in Knightdale, who gave Williams $2,100; James Callan, a real estate developer based in Wisconsin, who gave Kopac $2,000; and Curtis Wilson, an executive at a real estate development and construction services firm in Georgia, who gave Middleton $500.
Middleton’s three-way tie for top donors also includes former Durham mayor Steve Schewel, who contributed $1,000.
Kopac’s top donor is another local political figure: Durham County commissioner Nida Allam, whose political committee gave Kopac $2,500. Allam also personally gave Kopac $60.
Over a dozen other former and current electeds have donated money to candidates through personal contributions or political committees, including: former U.S. Congress member Wiley Nickel and former Durham City Council member Cora Cole-McFadden, who donated to Williams; Durham City Council member Carl Rist, former Durham City Council members Jillian Johnson and Charlie Reece, and former school board member Leigh Bordley, who donated to Kopac; North Carolina state senator Natalie Murdock and school board member Natalie Beyer, who donated to Middleton; former North Carolina state senator Floyd McKissick III, who donated to Burris; former U.S. Congress member Kathy Manning, who donated to Medoff; Raleigh City Council member Jane Harrison, who donated to Cook; and Durham City Council member Nate Baker, who donated to Freeman, Burris, and Cook.
A guy from California leads the mayor’s money
Williams’s top donor is Bobby Kotick, a former video game executive based in California. Kotick gave Williams $6,400, the maximum allowed contribution.
Other top donors run the gamut from local activists to professors. Burris’s top donor is Mary “Mimi” Kessler, a self-employed personal assistant who has been active in organizing around local housing and development issues, including spearheading opposition to the “SCAD” text amendment several years ago. Kessler gave Burris $500.
Middleton’s third top donor in the three-way tie is Fanxing Li, an associate professor in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at NC State University. Li donated $1,000.
Freeman and Kopac lead in grassroots support
Proportionately, Freeman’s campaign has the largest percentage of small donations: over half of the 107 donations to her campaign were made in amounts of $50 or less. By individual count, Kopac has the most small donations; 78 of the 280 donations made to his campaign were in amounts of $50 or less.
Williams and Bell have the largest proportion of donations made in amounts over $1,000— 9*** and 6 percent, respectively.
Donor geography is complicated
When a donor contributes $50 or less to a candidate, their name and address are not disclosed, which makes it hard to accurately assess donor locations.
For example, it appears that Middleton has the smallest proportional amount of Durham donors—just 30 percent—but if all the donors who gave him $50 or less live in Durham, he would actually have nearly 75 percent of his donations based in Durham.
Breaking things down by dollar amount also poses challenges. Technically, $9,700—90 percent—of Cook’s dollars have come from within Durham, but $4,100 of that is from their contributions to themselves.
Given these wrinkles, we’re not getting deep into donor geography.
Bell spent early while others saved for the homestretch
Bell and Williams have spent nearly the same amount over the course of the election: $28,100 and $27,400, respectively. But most of Bell’s expenditures were made between February and July. When most candidates hadn’t started raising money yet or even announced their runs, Bell was steadily spending over $22,000 on office space, photography sessions, coffee meetings, office supplies, and event materials.
Williams didn’t start spending in earnest until mid-August. Following the primary on October 7, he had $5,400 left on hand. Bell had $106.
Kopac has spent the most money of any candidate, but also saved nearly half of his total funds for the monthlong stretch before the general election, as did Medoff.
Yard signs cost more than you think
Most campaigns spent their biggest chunks on marketing materials. Kopac dropped $10,300 at Express Lanes Strategies for yard signs, palm cards, and website work. Cook spent $3,300 at Capitol Promotions on print media. Bell paid filmmaker Rodrigo Dorfman $2,500 for media.
Medoff, meanwhile, made her biggest single expenditure—$5,000—to the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People PAC after receiving their endorsement. Williams also gave $5,000 to the Durham Committee after they endorsed him. Freeman gave $250 to Durham Progressive Democrats after their endorsement. These contributions are standard and typically fund poll greeters and voter outreach efforts, according to Hall.
On the staffing side, campaigns were split between paid professionals and volunteers. Williams’s top expense overall was $5,250 to treasurer Phil Seib, who’s also working for Middleton, Kopac, and Medoff. Middleton’s largest expenditure was $5,000 to Reflex Strategies for campaign consulting. Freeman’s biggest expense was $3,100 for her campaign manager’s salary, while Burris’s was $500 for hers.
Cook and Bell are running entirely volunteer operations.
“You do not have to live in Durham to believe in Durham”
Candidates have taken varying approaches to messaging around campaign finance.
Cook has adopted an almost anti-fundraising message on their website, writing that they’re “not interested in drawing large sums of money away from our community to run this campaign.” They write that “outside of standard operating costs, the bulk of our expenditures will go directly to benefiting Durham” and say that after the election, all excess funds will be donated to local nonprofits.
Bell states on her site that “the people funding this campaign are the campaign” and casts a wide net: “You do not have to live in Durham to believe in Durham. If this movement speaks to you—your support is welcome here.”
Medoff, Kopac, Middleton, and Williams all released public statements about campaign finance transparency and their fundraising principles last month. The catalyst was Yes for Durham, a newly formed 501(c)(4) that endorsed the four candidates, including one candidate, Medoff, whose husband had a tie to the organization. The endorsements raised concerns about coordination as well as dark money—funds from nonprofits that don’t have to disclose their donors. All four candidates quickly issued statements rejecting dark money and stressing that their campaigns are funded by individual donors whose contributions are publicly disclosed.
Money didn’t predict primary performance
Neither raising nor spending was neatly correlated with candidates’ performances in the primary. Burris and Cook, the two lowest fundraisers and spenders, both emerged from the primary with significant leads over their better-funded opponents.
In Ward 1, Kopac won more votes than Freeman, but by a slim margin, despite spending over four times as much as she did. In the mayoral race, Williams and Bell spent almost exactly the same amount, yet Williams outperformed Bell by 25 percentage points.
If filing reports is hard, what about managing millions?
Some of these campaign coffers may seem substantial, but they pale in comparison to the over $700 million budget that the Durham City Council oversees. Whoever wins these seats will be making decisions about how to allocate massive sums of taxpayer money, making their ability to handle complex finances a relevant consideration.
Understanding who’s funding candidates’ campaigns also matters because donors may have interests before the council: zoning changes, city contracts, and the like. While donations don’t guarantee influence, they can indicate connections that voters deserve to know about.
The state has tried to make those relationships easier to track. In 2017, the North Carolina legislature passed a law requiring municipal candidates to file campaign finance reports electronically, as opposed to in paper form, if their reports exceed a $10,000 threshold.
“It’s part of that overall effort to have full disclosure in a timely manner,” Hall says.
Both Bell and Cook did not submit their latest campaign finance reports electronically despite exceeding the $10,000 threshold. (Cook filed all reports on paper on time. Bell filed one report on paper on time and submitted others in paper form after her unsuccessful electronic filing attempts.) This required the INDY to manually input hundreds of line items from PDF documents rather than working with downloadable CSV data.
The state’s electronic filing system requires candidates to generate a report using desktop software and then email that file to the state Board of Elections.
Cook’s campaign manager Michael Breen-McKay told the INDY that the campaign “definitely should be filing electronically at this point” but has encountered difficulties with the state’s software, calling it “an ancient program.” (The software was first used in the early 2000s and was most recently updated in August 2025, according to a spokesperson for the North Carolina Board of Elections.) Breen-McKay also noted that Cook works two jobs, and that this is their first campaign. Cook’s campaign has a volunteer treasurer, Laurel Shulman.
Bell told the INDY she had entered her data into the software but was unaware she needed to email the generated file to complete the submission process. Bell shared a screenshot with the INDY of the campaign finance software showing a field labeled “submit date,” which she said led her to believe the reports had been properly filed.
“This process is cumbersome and time-intensive, even for experienced campaign teams, and especially challenging for those new to the system,” Bell wrote in a statement.
Bell also told the INDY she was unaware her reports hadn’t been properly submitted until October 16, when the INDY contacted her. However, in an October 6 News & Observer article, Bell acknowledged that her reports weren’t online and told the paper she planned to promptly check with the Board of Elections. When asked for clarification, Bell said she didn’t end up checking with the Board of Elections because peers told her the reports were likely missing due to bureaucratic sluggishness.
This isn’t the first time Durham candidates have struggled with campaign finance compliance. Both Middleton and Williams failed to file required reports during the 2021 election cycle.
Stuart Robinson contributed data analysis. Data is sourced from the Durham County Board of Elections and North Carolina Board of Elections.
* Dollar amounts over $100 are rounded to the nearest $100.
** Bell’s reports contain numerous inconsistencies, namely in reported totals. We calculated Bell’s total fundraising, expenditures, and cash on hand based on the itemized receipts and expenditures in her reports. Our totals do not match Bell’s reported summary totals. When asked about inconsistencies in her reports, Bell attributed them to difficulties with the process of entering data. She said she plans to file amendments to correct the reports.
*** Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole percent.
Methodology
For candidates who filed paper reports, the INDY manually reviewed every line item in their PDFs available on the Durham County Board of Elections website. For candidates who filed electronically, we analyzed spreadsheets based on CSV files extracted from the state website. We manually added in-kind contributions to the expenditure tables in the CSV data, as these contributions are counted as both receipts and expenditures but were not included in the expenditure tables in the CSV data from the state site.
Cash-on-hand totals incorporate what candidates reported as their beginning balance as of January 1, 2025, plus receipts minus expenditures throughout the election period.
To identify donors who are real estate professionals, we examined donors’ listed occupations and conducted online searches to verify their identities against their listed addresses.