RALEIGH – When video sweepstakes executive Chase Burns sent about $270,000 in campaign donations to dozens of North Carolina state lawmakers and Gov. Pat McCrory a few years back, it was clear what he wanted. He wanted to make sure the sweepstakes games remained legal in the Tar Heel state, so he could profit.

But when word came out that he was involved in illegal activities elsewhere, many recipients of Burns’ tainted cash either voided his checks or sent the money to charity. The governor, for example, sent $8,000 in donations from Burns to charities.

In plenty of other instances, political candidates have returned money to the sender or donated it to a worthy cause because of circumstances surrounding the donor.

In 2011, for example, Ilario Pantano, a former candidate for U.S. House in North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District, returned a $1,000 contribution from Billy Williams, the former New Hanover County Alcoholic Beverage Control administrator who ultimately pleaded guilty to a felony count of obtaining property by false pretenses after a scandal involving work on Williams’ garage.

Pantano, who now serves as assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs in the McCrory administration, released the following statement about his return of the funds:

“In advance of any legal conclusion and without any accusation or provocation, we have returned Mr. Williams’ contribution. While we firmly believe in innocent until proven guilty, we also believe that campaign committees should make their best effort to be proactive in addressing ethical concerns.”

That brings me to the reason for this column. So far, we’ve seen no rush from anyone – McCrory or state legislators – to return or donate contributions from Graeme Keith Sr. and his son, Graeme “Greg” Keith Jr., who gave McCrory’s campaign at least $12,000 in recent years.

Then, according to media reports that haven’t been disputed, Keith Sr. asked to have his company’s prison maintenance contracts extended over the objections of state Department of Public Safety officials.

According to reporting by The News & Observer of Raleigh and The Charlotte Observer, the governor convened an October 2014 meeting in Charlotte, where, according to a Department of Public Safety memo, Keith Sr. told prison officials and McCrory that “he had been working on this project ‘private prison maintenance’ for over 10 years and during that time had given a lot of money to candidates running for public office and it was now time for him to get something in return.”

And he received his wish.

We’ve reached out to the McCrory campaign to ask them whether they have any plans for the donations received from the Keiths. As of the time of this writing, we haven’t received a response.

Clearly, the cases of Burns and Keith are different. Burns is an out-of-state criminal and no one is saying Keith, McCrory’s friend, did anything illegal – at least to my knowledge.

But both gave money to political candidates and sought something in return. So is anyone who received campaign cash from the Keiths going to give the money back or forward it to a charity?

The Keiths contributions don’t amount to anything near the hundreds of thousands of dollars Burns spent on North Carolina candidates.

But is it tainted money, too?

Patrick Gannon writes columns for the N.C. Press Association.