Our “conservative” 10th District congressman, Patrick McHenry, continues to attract personal good fortune like a magnet. Meanwhile, the 10 counties he represents have lost tens of thousands of jobs the last few years, with North Carolina’s highest unemployment—despite McHenry’s oft-repeated promise to bring us more jobs.
On April 20, McHenry purchased a three-bedroom, 2˝-bath home on the Lake Norman waterfront at Westport (near Denver in Lincoln County). The home had a previous county tax value of $543,595—but our good civil servant paid just $350,000!
And, McHenry had the gall to make this purchase just weeks after an email, newspaper column and robo-call blitz telling constituents they needed to step up and help him pay off $265,500 in 2008 campaign debts—so he could “fight the Democrats!”
He has finally managed to profit directly from the mortgage bust he helped to engineer from the House Banking and Financial Services Committee. You know, Barney Frank and the gang? The same people who spent $700 billion last fall in a bill they didn’t bother to read.
Our young lawmaker spends a lot of time at Frank’s elbow, apparently learning all the tricks congressmen use to feather their nests.
Frank, you recall, and Democrat Chris Dodd of the same committee in the Senate also made some nice real estate deals the last couple of years. Meanwhile, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac they were supposed to be watching slipped closer and closer to bankruptcy. McHenry, too, is a defender of subprime mortgages and voted to help big banks take over our local credit unions.
After coming into office as a “small businessman” of meager means some five years ago, he now owns homes and other properties in Catawba, Lincoln, Gaston and Mecklenburg counties—including a lakefront condo in Hickory.
In 2007, McHenry bought a house in Cherryville from Gaston County commissioner Allen Fraley for $87,500, and a few months later, the house was valued in tax records at $25,500 more. Even better, Fraley gave him a $500 campaign contribution within days of the closing!
While ordinary Americans struggle to borrow money from an out-of-control banking “system,” our young real estate magnate seems to attract money with ease.
McHenry secured a 30-year $280,000 mortgage on the Lake Norman property from Citizens South Bank in Gastonia, the same bank that mortgaged the Fraley house. The congressman then got a $43,000 equity line from the same institution—meaning that over 92% of the bargain price of that Lake Norman house is now secured by borrowed money. How?
The Citizens South president and the Gastonia realtor who signed the purchase documents for McHenry are, of course, past campaign donors and supporters. If I bought a house for less than 65% of its tax value, do you think that Gastonia bank would loan me all but 8% of the purchase price?
One has to wonder how someone who’s “working hard” for us hundreds of miles away can still find time to sniff out so many local real estate bargains. And, why does a single man in his early 30s, with no children or former wives, need to own so many different places to sleep—if not to take advantage of his position to increase his own personal fortune?
Illegal? Don’t know. Tasteless and insensitive to the plight of ordinary people in northwestern North Carolina? No doubt.
Conservative Republicans, who once stood for ethics and morality, can’t stand too many more Ted Stevenses, Larry Craigs, Tom Delays, Tom Foleys or other ethical lightweights. McHenry is mostly about using his “connections” to build his net worth, already in the million-dollar-range (according to reports he’s filed). At the same time, he insists that his lavish campaign spending (over $1.6 million last year) be borne by his “constituents.”
I understand how millionaires become congressmen, but how do people who’d never had a real job and almost no net worth five years ago become millionaires on “just” a congressman’s salary? Doesn’t anyone else want to know?
