How the Elections Transparency Act’s ‘dark money’ rules benefited NJ Democrats

4-minute read

The sweeping Elections Transparency Act was sold by Trenton’s ruling Democrats as a necessary revision of New Jersey’s outdated campaign finance system.

It would beam, for the first time, the purifying light of transparency onto some of New Jersey’s dark money groups, the law’s advocates contended. Complicated “pay-to-play” laws that bedeviled contractors for years would be streamlined. And donor limits would be increased to reflect the rising costs of running elections.

But the law also had another brass-tacks purpose. It provided New Jersey’s Democrats, who hold majorities in both the Assembly and the state Senate, with significant cash to steamroll their Republican rivals. That proved enough to crush the GOP’s hopes of expanding its foothold in Trenton — and maybe regaining majority control — after spending two decades on the sidelines of power.

The Democratic Party enjoyed a lopsided advantage in most of the six competitive contests that dominated each party’s fundraising and attention this fall, according to an examination of election filings released this week by the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission. Campaigns are required to submit reports 20 days after the election.

NJ Democrats reaped dividends — and then some

It was an investment that yielded an important dividend for the Democrats, who had entered the fall contest concerned that their long hold on power was beginning to ebb or, worse, could be washed away in a Republican wave. It didn’t happen.

Instead of losing ground, the Democrats expanded their control of the Assembly by flipping six seats, while holding their 10-seat margin in the state Senate. In six of the most hotly contested races — which drew most of each party’s money and focus — the Democratic candidates and their accounts poured close to $11 million into the contests, compared with about $4 million by Republicans, records show.

That does not include millions more spent by super PACs and other independent expenditure groups, which raise money under looser guidelines and are not permitted to coordinate with the candidates’ campaigns. A summary of outside spending is expected to be released by ELEC later this week.

But the outside spending role — which included the financing of phony “phantom candidates” linked to the South Jersey Democratic Party machine — more than likely tilted the Democrats’ advantage even further.

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An unsurprising edge

To some, the Democratic edge comes as no surprise.

The new Elections Transparency Act allowed for the doubling of campaign contributions for individual candidates and the tripling of large donations to state and county party accounts. That alone, some observers said, made it inevitable that the party that controls both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office would reap the windfall. It’s the party that controls the fate of coveted legislation and lucrative government contracts.

“Some of the senators were saying, ‘Well, look, this will help us; we’ll be able to raise money throughout the four years,’ ” said Senate Republican leader Anthony Bucco Jr. of Morris County, who voted against the Elections Transparency Act for a variety of reasons. “To me, it was absolutely clear that this was not going to benefit Republicans. It was going to benefit the Democrats, because they’re the party in power.”

And with that money comes the ability to saturate mailboxes and media markets with political advertising and drown out campaigns with lesser means. That was the case in the competitive 11th Legislative District in Monmouth, where state Sen. Vin Gopal was viewed as the most endangered Democrat.

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Gopal hung on to his seat in the 2021 contest while his two Assembly running mates lost. This time, Gopal found himself in the cross-currents of culture war issues. Several Monmouth County school systems (although outside his own district) were engulfed in a firestorm over “parental rights” involving transgender students while opponents of Gov. Phil Murphy’s push to build offshore wind farms had also infuriated many Jersey Shore residents.

Gopal, whose district includes Asbury Park and Long Branch, distanced himself from both of those issues. But he also had a full Democratic Party effort behind him, including unions, independent attack ads from a group aligned with state Senate President Nick Scutari, and a lopsided fundraising advantage.

Gopal and his Assembly running mates, Luanne Peterpaul and Margie Donlon, amassed $3.7 million compared with $739,000 raised by Republican state Senate challenger Steve Dnistrian and GOP Assembly incumbents Marilyn Piperno and Kim Eulner. In the end, Gopal won by 16 points and swept in Peterpaul and Donlon on his coattails.

GOP ‘ran out of juice’ as labor donations surged

Ironically, it seemed over the summer that the fury over parental rights, which Republicans sought to harness, was looming as a frightening threat to Democrats. Some feared that it had the ability to attract moderate Democrats and independents and older voters, who tend to have a larger presence in low-turnout elections. But in the end, the Republicans simply didn’t have enough money to communicate for the long haul of the race.

Republicans “ran out of juice,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “They couldn’t drive that message through the fall. And the Democrats knew they were gonna pour it on and the Republicans wouldn’t be able to.”

Unions — already generous donors to free-wheeling super PACs and big spenders in their own right — took advantage of the Elections Transparency Act, which doubled what unions could give directly to candidates, from $2,600 to $5,200, and through their PACs, from $8,200 to $16,400. 

Labor’s increased largesse, not surprisingly, benefited the Democrats.

Gopal collected the maximum $16,400 from several union PACs: Greater New Jersey Carpenters, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 456 and 269, the New Jersey Laborers, and IBEW Local 400, State Electrical Workers, where Gopal is a member. Gopal’s ticket also benefited from the get-out-the-vote manpower of the Service Employees International Union, which bused in canvassers from their locals in New York.

In the 3rd Legislative District, in Salem, Gloucester and Cumberland counties, state Sen.-elect John Burzichelli, D-Paulsboro, drew $127,000 from unions and union PACs — or $35,800 more than he could have collected under the previous lower limits.

A day after the election, Scutari hailed the Elections Transparency Act “because we saw more transparency than we ever saw before in terms of fundraising.” He was referring specifically to the provisions that required independent expenditure groups to disclose donations of $7,500 or more.

But the early reports this week on the election also make it clear that the new law gave his party an enormous advantage and one that will keep it in power for the next two years — and possibly many more election cycles to come.