All of the final pre-election campaign finance reports are in now and they show that the four Republican candidates for Wake County commissioner have raised more than their Democratic opponents.

Republicans got $48,000 from Art Pope and his family and $31,000 from political action committees for realtors and homebuilders. They also got thousands of dollars from individuals involved in both fields.

Democrats got $13,000 from Jim Goodmon and his wife. Democrats didn't get anywhere close to the Republicans in terms of PAC money. But they did a lot  of individual smaller donations from people who've opposed the school board's elimination of the diversity policy.

Questions continue to swirl around the new Wake County school board majority's efforts to hire a prominent Republican attorney to audit the district's legal services.

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith, former school board chairman Kevin Hill is questioning Thomas Farr's political ties. He was a former GOP nominee for a federal judgeship and a former legal counsel for the state Republican Party.

"I do believe it doesn't look good for the board," Hill said in the article. "He is closely identified with the Republican Party at the state level. His law firm has a minimum amount of experience with school law."

If actions have consequences, the consequences for speaking out in favor of the diversity policy could be costly for one local law firm.

It didn't escape the attention of the new school board majority that prominent local attorney Wade Smith was one of the speakers at the Oct. 5 Friends of Diversity press conference. Smith had helped push the 1976 merger through when he was in the General Assembly.

One potential response by the new board majority is to drop the firm that Smith helped found, Tharrington Smith, as the school district's attorney.

UPDATE

Ann Majestic says Smith never agreed to attend the Friends of Diversity press conference and did not attend. His name was on the list of speakers put out by the event's organizer, Keith Sutton.

Smith had talked about the importance of the diversity policy in an article that ran the Sunday before the election.