QUESTION: Is it true that Ed Priola, one of the Republican contenders for Alamance County’s board of commissioners, had a domestic violence order and several financial actions filed against him in Maryland nearly three decades ago?
ANSWER: In its coverage of this year’s elections, The Alamance News has delved into the legal histories of the candidates for most of the local offices that are up for grabs in November’s general election. Yet, for expediency’s sake, the newspaper limited its inquiries to cases in North Carolina – and in particular, those that were readily available online through the state court system’s eCourts portal, which currently includes records for 38 of the state’s 100 counties.
In early July, the newspaper scoured eCourts for each of the six candidates in this year’s race for the board of commissioners. At the time, this online service was limited to just 27 counties, although those counties included such noteworthy entries as Alamance, Guilford, Orange, Durham, and Wake.
The newspaper’s foray into the eCourts yielded court records for all of this year’s would-be commissioners – with the single exception of Edward James Priola. A Mebane resident who made his political debut in 2022 as a candidate for the state’s 63rd house district, Priola didn’t appear in any of the civil or criminal cases that were available through eCourts back then.
The newspaper didn’t go on to search for Priola’s name in other record repositories since it hadn’t done so for any of the other commissioner candidates. It acknowledged, however, that Priola’s pristine legal history excluded any North Carolina cases not yet on eCourts and any cases from jurisdictions outside of North Carolina.
As it turns out, Priola’s name does turn up in court records outside of the Tar Heel State – namely in Maryland’s equivalent of North Carolina’s eCourts portal.
According to Maryland’s court system, this online data trove contains information on civil, criminal, and traffic cases from district courts in all 23 of the state’s counties as well as the city of Baltimore. The state’s court system notes that these civil cases go back as far as 1989, while the catalog of criminal files begins late in 1991. Maryland’s court system also contains data on civil and criminal cases that were heard at the circuit court level and information on matters that have gone before Maryland’s statewide appellate courts.
A search for Ed Priola’s name in this system brings up a total of four entries – the earliest being a “domestic violence” case that was filed in Anne Arundel County, Maryland on June 30, 1997. The record for this case refers to a protective order that was apparently “not served” before the case was closed, a week after its genesis, on July 7, 1997.
On August 8, 1997, Priola’s then-wife Betty filed a divorce action against her husband, who court records indicate had relocated to Madison, Wisconsin. The divorce was apparently consummated by April 27 of the following year, when the courts logged the last activity in this particular case.
Roughly a month before the final entry in the divorce case, the courts received a foreclosure action against the estranged couple that appears to have petered out by January of 2001. Meanwhile, on February 17, 1999, the state of Maryland filed a lien against the Priolas for $1,247.40 in unpaid income taxes – a debt that the court records indicate was satisfied by November 9, 2005.
These meager details are all that’s available from Maryland’s online compendium of court records. Unlike North Carolina’s eCourts portal, Maryland’s service doesn’t allow users to download documents that are referenced in case summaries. Instead, anyone interested in a thorough rendering of any particular case is instructed to make the request “in person or in writing” to “the courthouse where the case record is on file.”
The shortcomings of Maryland’s online court records are especially problematic when it comes to the aforementioned protective order – whose brief lifespan hints at some hidden subtext at work in this case. The protective order, moreover, seemed to come as a shock to Priola, who was nevertheless forthcoming about the other three cases in his Maryland court record.
“This was probably related to the divorce. But I have no knowledge of it,” the candidate said in reference to the protective order in an interview Wednesday. “I have never been served. I have never been arrested. And I have never had any restraining order brought in my life.”
Although the case file for the protective order assigns a Maryland address to Priola, the candidate believes that he may have already been living in Wisconsin when this matter first surfaced. The case note that says the order was “not served” seems to substantiate Priola’s suspicion on this score. It also gives credit to his assurances that he didn’t know anything about the protective order.
Priola is on much firmer ground when it comes to two civil actions that appeared on the docket in the wake of his divorce. In reference to the foreclosure case, he concedes that his ex-wife went through some financial hardships at about the same time that she filed for divorce.
“We had jointly purchased a home, and it was foreclosed on because she became ill,” he said. “She had lupus, and she was unable to work.”
Priola acknowledged that he and his ex-wife ultimately filed for personal bankruptcy – a fact that he said he publicly admitted when it first arose in the course of his campaign for the board of commissioners.
The bankruptcy case wasn’t handled by Maryland’s state courts, falling instead under the purview of the federal court system. It therefore has no separate case file in Maryland’s online repository of court records. Even so, Priola said that the bankruptcy came into play in the income tax action, which he said was paid off as part of the bankruptcy process.
In any event, Priola stresses that he was no longer living in Maryland when all these legal entanglements arose for him and his ex wife. He also insists that, when it comes to actual criminal cases, his record in Maryland is just as spotless as it is in North Carolina.
“The one thing I want to make clear,” he added, “is that I’ve never been arrested in my life, and I’ve never had any issues with the police.”
THE PUBLIC ASKS: Have a question about a matter of public record? Call The Alamance News at (336) 228-7851; write to the newspaper at P.O. Box 431, Graham, NC 27253; or e-mail alamancenews@mail.com.
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