Complaints Filed Against 2 GOP Members of Cumberland County Elections Board

A long-time elections watchdog wants the chair of the Cumberland County Board of Elections kicked off the board, asserting in complaints to the State Board of Elections that she has a conflict of interest, did not report an allegedly illegal donation, and performs her job poorly.

He further alleged in the complaints that the county board’s secretary made an illegal $25,000 donation to the county Republican Party, and the chair knew about it.

Bob Hall, the former executive director of the Democracy NC good governance organization, told CityView he filed complaints Tuesday with the state board against county Chair Linda Devore and Secretary Bree Eldridge.

On the five-person county elections board, Devore and Eldridge are two of its three Republicans. Both are former chairs of the Cumberland County Republican Party. Hall’s filing included sworn statements from five Republicans in Cumberland County.

Devore and Eldridge disputed Hall’s accusations in interviews with CityView.

“There’s no ‘here’ here,” Devore said. Hall’s paperwork has “so many false statements.”

“I don’t know if this is a targeted smear or what,” Eldridge said. “People can gossip and spread rumors, and I think I’ve heard the gamut lately. But there’s no proof of anything.”

Hall and Democracy NC have a long history of reporting instances of campaign finance irregularities to the State Board of Elections.

This is the second time in less than a year that Devore has faced a complaint at the state board. In July, the state board reviewed and rejected an accusation that Devore’s position on the county elections board and her work on a state convention committee of the North Carolina Republican Party created a conflict of interest.

Straw Donation?

Hall’s complaints, citing sworn affidavits from five local GOP activists, alleged there is evidence that Eldridge committed a felony with what he described as her straw donation of  $25,000 to the county party in 2022.

A straw donation occurs when someone collects money from other people and donates it under their own name to protect the anonymity of the donors. State law requires the public disclosure of donations to political parties and prohibits straw donations.

Eldridge was the county party chair in 2022 and did not join the elections board until 2025. She said the donation was all her own money. It was to help the county GOP pay for an appearance by Michael Flynn, a prominent right-wing activist and retired general, at a party fundraiser.

Eldridge showed her checking account records to Hall, she said, to prove that she did not funnel other people’s money through her account, but instead got most of it from a brokerage account.

“I knew I was going to make this donation, and I sold a bunch of stock, or whatever, and used the proceeds of that, and transferred it over to cover the check. And I showed him all this,” Eldridge said.

Hall in his filing was unpersuaded. He argued there was little activity in general in Eldridge’s checking account, and said she could have used accounts to receive money “to augment or reimburse herself for the $25,000 donation.”

‘Quasi-Treasurer’

Hall said Devore, as chair of the audit committee of the county Republican Party, was aware of questions about Eldridge’s donation. This committee annually assesses the party’s financial records, Devore told CityView.

Hall asserts that as committee chair, Devore was the “quasi-treasurer” of the party. “It appears that the CCGOP audit committee and its chair oversee and essentially supervise the work of the treasurer,” he said in one of the complaints.

Under state law, Hall said, that would make Devore a party official and put her into a conflict of interest with her role as a member and chair of the county elections board. She would be caught between fixing problems, or even covering them up, instead of reporting them to the State Board of Elections, he said.

Jason Tyson, a spokesperson for the State Board of Elections, told CityView the agency “has previously determined that not every role undertaken on behalf of a political party is deemed to make an individual an ‘official’ of that party.” To the best of the staff’s knowledge, he said, the state board “has not previously been presented with the question of whether a member of a party audit committee is an ‘official’ of that party.”

Complaints from Republicans

Hall’s complaints include notarized affidavits from five prominent Cumberland County Republicans.

These include Venus de la Cruz, who is running for state Senate; her daughter Calista Cuevas, who is chair of Cumberland County Moms for Liberty and president of the state chapter of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies.

Also: Linda McAlister-Brown, a former assistant treasurer of the county GOP and former president of the Republican Women’s Club; former county party Chair Nina Morton; and Juanita Gonzalez, who is a former Cumberland County Commissioner who also served on the Fayetteville City Council and Cumberland County Board of Education.

Some of the points they made in their affidavits about Eldridge, Devore, and the money raised for the Flynn event:

• Linda McAlister-Brown said of Eldridge: “She told me she was getting donations from friends and neighbors” for the event.
• Calista Cuevas said she found a party record “which attributes the $25,000 contribution not to Bree but to ‘Private Donations’—note the plural Donations.” She alleged Devore knew about questions surrounding Eldridge’s donation through her tenure on the county GOP’s audit committee.
• Nina Morton, who was the party chair from March 2023 to March 2025, also noticed the “private donations” citation that Cuevas mentioned, and said, “funds collected from a single person where listed as ‘Individual.’”
• Juanita Gonzalez said she served on the party’s audit committee with Devore in late 2024 and early 2025. During a meeting, she said, Devore told the other members she quit the audit committee in a previous year when Eldridge’s $25,000 donation was part of the records. “She didn’t want to sign off on an audit that she knew was not correct,” Gonzalez said.
• Venus de la Cruz said that during a Republican Party meeting in February 2025, Devore said she quit serving on the audit committee during a previous year because of Eldridge’s $25,000 donation. “Linda went on to say something like, ‘You know, that contribution was illegal. Dinesh D’Souza went to prison for that same thing.’” 

D’Souza is a right-wing activist who pleaded guilty in 2014 to violating federal campaign finance law by using straw donors to make donations to a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in 2012. President Donald Trump pardoned him in 2018.

Devore said she has no doubt that Eldridge’s donation was her own money.

“She preferred that it stay under the radar, except for the report filed with the state, so that locals did not look to her as a deep pocket donor,” Devore said. “She told me all of this within 24 hours of me seeing the donation for the first time in a campaign finance report.”

The affidavits are wrong about why she quit the audit committee in 2023 during the review of the GOP’s financial records from 2022, Devore said. She stepped away to assist her 99-year-old mother in Indiana, who “had a sudden decline in health.”

She and her siblings took turns caring for her mother in early 2023 until she died in March, Devore said. “She needed my attention, and she was my preoccupation during those weeks,” she  said.

Devore returned to the audit committee in 2024, she said.

Internal GOP Division

De de la Cruz and Cuevas have at times been a nucleus of criticism within the county Republican Party, and Morton lost her bid for reelection as chair in March 2025 following complaints about her leadership and ability. Cuevas and de la Cruz have published videos questioning the leadership.

During a county GOP executive committee meeting in October, Cuevas got into a fracas with party activist Laura Mussler, and they filed misdemeanor assault charges on each other. They both told CityView in February they would drop the charges, and the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office dismissed their cases on February 9. The executive committee is a leadership group within the party that includes current and former local elected officials, among others.

Cuevas and de la Cruz, who are not members of the executive committee, were booted from an executive committee meeting on January 8 at the Republican Candidates Resource Center on Owen Drive. Then they were issued no-trespassing notices after they remained outside and watched and videoed the meeting through the building’s windows.

The committee was selecting a new party chair and other party officers following the resignation of the chair.

The Resource Center is also the 2026 headquarters for the Cumberland County Republican Party.

‘We Don’t Give Up Our Party Memberships’

Video that Cuevas posted on Facebook showed Devore running the committee meeting.

Hall’s complaint does not address Devore’s appearance, but Cuevas and de la Cruz have questioned whether Devore created a conflict of interest presiding over the Republican Party gathering while also serving on the Cumberland County Board of Elections.

Devore told CityView she doesn’t believe this was a conflict of interest.

“Boards of elections members, by statute, can do a lot of things,” she said. “We don’t give up our party memberships. We can attend party conventions. We can attend and do whatever we want. We just can’t be elected officers or be in decision-making roles.”

North Carolina law requires members of the state and local elections boards to be either Republicans or Democrats, Devore said.

“We’re not asked, nor required to give that up. We’re told we cannot do certain things, and I don’t do those things,” she said. “I really am at arm’s length, and I was in that situation.”  

‘Belittling’ and ‘Bullying’?

Hall’s complaint also accused Devore of authoritarian leadership since she became the county elections board chair in July. Observers of county elections board meetings “describe her frequent ‘belittling,’ ‘bullying’ and ‘beating up’” on staff members, he said.

“In one recent meeting Devore ridiculed another board member, who was not born in the United States, by saying she has ‘not culturally assimilated’ to this country,” Hall wrote.

That was in reference to Democratic board member Irene Grimes, a Greek immigrant.

Grimes told CityView she heard Devore make the comment on March 3, which was primary election day, to another person.

Devore said the comment was a joke during a moment of levity among election board members, including Grimes, as they headed into the long hours of Election Day work.

“This was a light-hearted conversation that she initiated about not understanding how football scores work,” Devore said. Grimes has previously poked fun at other board members and herself, Devore said, saying American football is “not like real football.” Outside the United States, soccer is generally called football.

As for clashes with the staff, there have been times, Devore said, where the board voted for policies and made other decisions, and the elections staff did not follow the mandates.

Hall cited a conflict between Devore and county Elections Director Angie Amaro about where people are allowed to campaign outside a polling place. State law bans campaigning within 50-feet of the entrance.

Hall asserted that Devore allowed a campaign’s tent in the 50-foot buffer. A photo in his complaint showed signs for two Democratic judicial candidates, Tyran Jamail George and Judge Cheri Siler-Mack, under the tent. While part of the tent extended into the buffer, the signs were outside the buffer.

Devore told CityView that she never sought to allow campaigning inside the 50-foot buffer. Instead, she said, she was arguing with Amaro in February to follow a new policy the board enacted in January loosening restrictions on where people may electioneer outside the buffer zone.

Hall criticized how Devore handled the appointment of precinct judges, saying she favored Republicans during a board meeting in August. Each polling place has three judges to adjudicate issues, such as questions about a voter’s photo ID, Devore said. Judges are appointed for two-year terms.

Devore said that for the August meeting, the county Republican Party submitted a list of people to include in the 231 judge positions needed to staff the 77 polling sites, but the Democrats had not.

Additional judges, Devore said, were appointed from a list of people the elections staff recommended, and the board approved the staff-recommended judges with a unanimous vote. But there were still 11 vacancies, she said.

In another point, Hall criticized Devore for having the county issue a news release on March 2 about a potential hours-long delay in reporting Cumberland County’s election results in the March 3 primary. The county’s announcement led to confusion in other counties across the state, Hall said, and “is an example of the statewide effect of Devore’s strong-willed and poor leadership.”

Devore said on Tuesday that elections staff alerted her of the potential delay due to a state-mandated software update of tabulation equipment. Devore wanted to keep the public informed, she said, to minimize impatience and frustration with any delay of the results on election night.

Board Unanimously Rejects Earlier Complaint About Devore

This is the second time in a year Devore faced a complaint with the State Board of Elections.

In May, Jim Womack, chair of the Lee County Republican Party, accused Devore of a conflict of interest between her service on the Cumberland County Board of elections and her position in 2024 as chair of the credentialing committee for the North Carolina Republican Party’s annual convention. This committee vets whether proposed delegates to the NCGOP’s annual convention are qualified, Devore said. For example, she said, the committee verifies that they were registered as members of the Republican Party prior to a deadline. Delegates to the convention vote on party matters.

State law prohibits elections board members from holding office in a political party but allows them to serve as delegates to a political party convention.

The State Board of Elections on July 21 considered the complaint and voted unanimously that Devore’s role in vetting delegates to the Republican Party’s state convention was not a conflict of interest with her service on the county elections board. The ruling also said that board members may serve on their parties’ convention credentialing committees.

In 2025, Devore served on the board of the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville, which is a nonprofit that financially supports CityView.

Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.

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