Man Who Was Accused —Then Cleared — in Insurance Fraud Enters North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Race
December 16, 2015 by Thomas Harman, Washington Bureau manager, BestWeek: Tom.Harman@ambest.com
RALEIGH, N.C. – North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin will face one of two Republican challengers in next year’s general election as he seeks a third term, one of them a construction contractor who last year faced 108 insurance fraud charges that were later dropped.
Republicans competing to be Goodwin’s challenger are Ronald Pierce, who was cleared of charges that he had obtained property under false pretenses. Pierce’s opponent is Mike Causey, who was defeated as the GOP nominee after taking 48.1% of the vote in the November 2012 general election (Best’s News Service, Nov. 7, 2012).
In 2014, the Department of Insurance alleged Pierce acted as an unlicensed public adjuster to provide services to his own businesses, Clear Choice Construction and Piedmont Disaster Services. Pierce was accused of providing inflated hail damage repair estimates and receiving $450,000 in fraudulent payments from insurance companies during 2012-2013, according to the DOI.
Pierce’s website said the charges were dropped due to “no probable cause,” but he said his company’s reputation had been ruined as he lost more than $1 million in construction contracts throughout the Carolinas. Pierce’s website said the investigations followed his requests for investigation of insurance companies and the DOI regarding claims handling.
Causey has been defeated in four earlier attempts to become insurance commissioner. Causey’s campaign website said he is running to “break the Commissioner’s iron-grip control over our outdated insurance department and modernize it to better serve North Carolina consumers.”
Causey’s website promises reforms to the insurance department to relieve what the campaign says are high insurance costs, frustration among consumers in claims handling and allowing the insurance department to be more responsive to customers. He also seeks to abolish the North Carolina Rate Bureau, which files for rates on behalf of various industry segments, including homeowners, automobile and workers’ compensation insurance. Goodwin, a Democrat, has rejected NCRB rate increase requests as high as 25% in January 2015.
The Republican primary slate decreased following the recent withdrawal of candidate Heather Grant, a nurse practitioner and former U.S. Army Nurse Corps officer from Wilkesboro. A statement from her campaign said that continuing health problems would not allow her to meet the demands necessary to succeed in a statewide race (Best’s News Service, June 15, 2015).
Goodwin recently told Best’s News Service he is talking with his state’s congressional delegation about ways to create a private flood insurance market and cautioned state lawmakers to be cautious about moving any bill based on the Oklahoma workers’ compensation law that allows employers to opt-out of state systems (Best’s News Service, Nov. 25, 2015).
