The N&O reports that a lobbyist reportedly attempted to bribe a legislator to kill a bill.

RALEIGH, N.C.  – The North Carolina Secretary of State’s office is investigating a former lobbyist on allegations that he had clients underreport their payments to him.

A four-page statement filed in Wake County Superior Court said an investigator thought former lobbyist Don Beason told some of his 24 clients in 2007 to provide inaccurate information on state disclosure forms.

Beason said he didn’t know special agent John Lynch of the Secretary of State’s office was investigating and hadn’t talked to him, The News & Observer reported Tuesday. Beason did not respond to further questions, the newspaper said.

The newspaper reported that Beason’s lobbying ended in 2007 when reports surfaced that he gave a $500,000, no-interest loan to former House Speaker Jim Black. The former speaker is serving a five-year federal prison sentence for a political corruption conviction.

“I have discovered a pattern of under reporting of the lobbyist compensation,” Lynch wrote in the sworn statement filed in the court. “This under reporting is often done at the instruction of the lobbyist without any written or substantial justification.”

Lynch said he learned that Beason asked the Albemarle Mental Health Center, a regional facility in Elizabeth City, to report less than he was paid.

Lynch didn’t identify the 23 other clients.

State law treats many reporting violations as misdemeanors.

Lynch’s affidavit was filed as part of the Secretary of State’s lawsuit seeking records about Beason from Progress Energy, one of his clients, which has since agreed to hand over the records. The Raleigh-based utility said in a statement its relationship with Beason was “handled in compliance with all applicable laws regarding lobbying compensation.”

Beason once represented some of the state’s biggest companies and earned fees as high as $50,000 from clients.

The N&O is reporting that Garrett Perdue has joined Womble Carlyle, the state’s largest law firm.

ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. – Roger Bone, a former state lawmaker who became one of North Carolina’s most influential lobbyists, died Sunday. He was 69.

Friends said Bone died early Sunday at his Rocky Mount home. He was diagnosed last May with biliary cancer, which had spread to his liver, said friend and colleague Lou Wilson.

Bone served in the state House from 1979 to 1981. He later became a lobbyist who was repeatedly recognized as one of Raleigh’s most powerful operatives.

“He loved the General Assembly. He loved everybody there,” said Wilson, the executive director of the North Carolina Association of Long Term Care Facilities, which Bone represented.

“You never saw him without a smile on his face. It didn’t matter if it was the governor or the janitor in the room, he made everybody feel the same.”

The nonpartisan North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research ranked Bone as the most influential lobbyist in North Carolina last year. He operated the Raleigh-based firm Bone and Associates with his son, Fred.

“He has been a mentor to so many people,” Wilson said.

WASHINGTON – Washington lobbyist Vicki Iseman filed a $27 million suit Tuesday against The New York Times in federal court in Richmond, claiming the newspaper damaged her reputation by falsely implying she had an illicit “romantic” relationship with Sen. John McCain.

A Feb. 21 article in the Times reported that aides to McCain had tried to distance the Arizona Republican from Iseman in 1999, fearing the two had become romantically involved after sharing a flight aboard a corporate jet.

“The Times article caused [Iseman] serious damage to her professional reputation and it was utterly false. She is taking advantage of what the law provides,” said Iseman’s attorney Rodney A. Smolla.

Smolla and W. Coleman Allen Jr. of Richmond filed the libel suit in U.S. District Court in Richmond.

The New York Times released a statement saying it stands behind its article.

“We continue to believe it to be true and accurate, and that we will prevail. As we said at the time, it was an important piece that raised questions about a presidential contender and the perception that he had been engaged in conflicts of interest,” the Times statement said.

The article reported that both McCain and Iseman denied having any “romantic relationship.”

The article said aides to McCain grew concerned about frequent visits between the senator and the lobbyist and that the relationship would become public after McCain, then chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, sent a letter to government regulators on behalf of an Iseman client, the Times reported.

Smolla, dean of the Washington and Lee University School of Law, specializes in libel, privacy and First Amendment law. He is a member of the board of directors of Media General, Inc.

Iseman lives and works in Virginia. The defendants include the Times’ executive editor in New York, its Washington bureau chief and four reporters in Washington.

Smolla said the suit was filed in federal court because all the defendants live outside Virginia.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, suggested the attorneys may have been seeking a more favorable judge by filing the suit in Richmond rather than Alexandria.

The suit contends the paper acted with “actual malice” – a “reckless disregard” for the truth.

But because Iseman was not a public figure in 1999, the period when she lobbied John McCain, to support her defamation claim she must prove only that the newspaper was negligent in its reporting.

The 36-page complaint says the plane trip McCain took with Iseman as a representative of her client was “entirely professional, ethical, and appropriate.”

Iseman is a partner at the Arlington-based lobbying firm Alcalde & Fay.

The Feb. 21 story “destroyed and permanently altered” Iseman’s hope of having “anything resembling a normal life,” the suit stated in seeking $27 million in damages.

“In legal terms this was an act of negligence and actual malice. In human terms, this was an act of callus indifference to human decency and human dignity,” the suit said.