Updated 7/15/01 CAMPAIGN FINANCES
Full disclosure on campaign funding
07/17/00, Star LedgerIf you give money to a candidate for governor in New Jersey, your name goes on the Web and everyone knows it. You can't give more than $2,100 per contest. And regulated industries like casinos, banks and utilities can't give a penny.
But now we are faced with the mother of all loopholes, one that could crush this carefully designed system to dust. Using the loophole, candidates can solicit money from anyone they want, in any quantity, and keep it secret from the public. A casino, or even a criminal, could buy influence in Trenton with a $1 million check and voters would never know.
If you hoped for principled opposition to this sleazy tactic, think again -- all three leading candidates for the Republican gubernatorial nomination are raising secret money through this loophole.
Now a backlash is building. Congress voted to ban "527 groups," which allow these big, secret donations. But lawyers are already finding other, similar loopholes. And the ban may not even apply to state races.
In Trenton, support is building for a sensible reform that would force gubernatorial candidates to disclose their donors before getting any matching funds. That's a powerful incentive for candidates since matching funds during the last election amounted to nearly $6.5 million.Feeling the heat, Senate President Donald DiFrancesco announced last week that he will release the names of donors who gave him a total of $1.3 million under the 527 loophole. Assembly Speaker Jack Collins has vowed to do the same. Better late than never.
Bret Schundler, the mayor of Jersey City, remains defiant. He is raising money under a different provision of the tax code and seems to think that makes a difference. But it's the same corrupt practice -- raising unlimited money from secret donors. We may never learn the names on Schundler's List, but we have learned something about Schundler. He is not the reformer he pretends to be. All these fund-raising vehicles rest on the legal fiction that the money is spent to advance causes, not candidates. Take a look, though, at the mass mailing that was paid for by secret donations to DiFrancesco's fund -- it's supposedly about Megan's law, but it is stuffed with references to DiFrancesco, and his picture is placed prominently. Didn't Collins support that law, too?The bill to force disclosure is a good first step, a needed supplement to the federal ban on 527s. The prime sponsor, Sen. William Gormley, said he will amend it to include donations raised by candidates under any provision in the tax code, so Schundler's fund would be affected.
Full disclosure is a starting point for any reform. It should also be a litmus test for any candidate in either party who wants to be our next governor.
The above Star Ledger article referred to Schundler's "Empower the People" and "The New Jersey Scholarship Fund". Schundler is on record that he will not divulge the names nor $$ amounts from his contributors even at the expense of loosing millions in State matching campaign funds for the gubernatorial race! Yet, for the past five years or so, tax abatements and massive changes to Redevelopment Plans have been ramrod through Planning Board meetings and City Council votes over the objections of the true "stakeholders", the citizens of JC. See TAX ABATEMENTS
& NEIGHBORHOODS FIGHTING CITY HALL. The Mayor and City Council can't pass those sweet heart tax abatements fast enough while the City is on the first step to state-take over as a "Distressed City"."The sniping continues between the campaigns of Acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco and Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, rivals for the Republican nomination for governor. DiFrancesco's campaign called on Schundler to divulge the contributors to his charitable organizations.
"In order to assure New Jersey voters he is not bypassing state election law by diverting high dollar campaign contributions into other accounts, Bret Schundler must immediately disclose contributors to his charitable organization," DiFrancesco campaign manager Charlie Smith said.
Smith specifically cited a $10,000 contribution to Schundler by former Rep. Frank Guarini, D-Jersey City, which was returned because it exceeded campaign limits. Smith noted Guarini's development firm has obtained tax abatements for several projects in Jersey City.
Smith said it is "unknown whether Guarini then contributed" the returned amount into other Schundler accounts, such as Empower the People or The New Jersey Scholarship Fund.
"These organizations do not have donation limits and have spent over $1.3 million to promote Schundler through television and radio commercials last year, at the same time he was a gubernatorial candidate," Smith said. "The voters of New Jersey deserve to know whether these organizations are being used to avoid compliance with state election law contribution limits."
Normal limits on individual contributions are $2,600 for a primary and $2,600 for a general election.
The Schundler campaign did not immediately respond. " ("Campaign trail"
, 02/17/01, Peter Weiss's column in the Jersey Journal)Less than a year later, May 7th, 2001, Schundler announced he would take public matching funds... He must disclose his list of contributors. Under a new state law, contributors to such groups as "Empower the People" & "The NJ Scholarship Fund" must be disclosed -- if the money is used for political purposes -- before a gubernatorial candidate can receive taxpayer campaign. To no one's surprise, except maybe the Jersey Journal editorial staff who refused to publish the article, big bucks came from the waterfront developers. The Star Ledger article "Report links contributions to tax breaks", 5/16/01.
"The campaign's documents show "Empower The People" had received $1,337,614 from about 500 different contributors from 1998 to the present, including donations from key Jersey City development interests, prominent law firms and financial investment groups. The developers who received tax abatements and donated to the group included Newport Associates Development, Mack-Cali Real Estate, Frank Guarini and Hartz Mountain Industries.
"The economic development policies that Bret has implemented in Jersey City have been very successful," said Guhl. "They have included tax abatements . . . (But) there was no quid-pro-quo. All of the tax abatements that were granted had to be approved by the city council.'" How true, there wasn't anything FORMER Council President Tom DeGise wouldn't push through for Bret! The voters on June 5th remembered & didn't push through Tom...!
"Republican gubernatorial candidate Bret Schundler vows to sweep Trenton clean of insiders and lobbyists with a vengeance that hasn't been seen since Jesus cleared the temple." (Asbury Park Press 1/14/01, LINK)
Cartoon by Steve Close, "Klose Encounters", 11/28/97
Updated 7/15/01:
Schundler spent a record $2 million to get re-elected Mayor in 1997 against an unknown Jeremiah Healy, former Municipal Judge! Schundler did not get 50% plus 1 vote in the May election so faced Healy in a run-off....
1997 Top ten campaign contributors as detailed in a JJ article dated 11/21/97:
The JC Incinerator Authority demolition work, razed the Majestic Theatre downtown $450,000, razed the old State Theatre in Journal Square which had collapsed onto an adjacent building..
$ 790,000 in legal fees which was greater than the settlement of $500,000! (see Police)
who are building 70 and 90 Exchange Place and have gotten lucrative 20-year tax abatements.
Source: Jersey Journal 11/21/97 article by Brian Donohue "Bret's Bucks" and updated.
Additions include…
Former Republican Party national finance chairman Lawrence Bathgate who later represented the City in the 1997 lawsuit against Breen Capital for the 1993-94 bulk lien sale which the Mayor still raves about…about $1 million in legal fees on a $6.25 million settlement of the $25 million plus interest in "Subordinate / Promissory Notes" due the city.... 25 cents/ dollar.. See the Star ledger article " A political 'outsider' with link to the inside", 7/12/01. "According to city records, Bathgate's firm received $668,000 from 1998 to 2000 to sue two firms responsible for collecting unpaid taxes in the lien deal." The reporters didn't go back far enough. Bathgate began working on the case in 1996 and collected closer to $1 million in total fees.
"Over the past eight years, Bathgate, his family and law firm associates have donated at least $20,050 to Schundler's political campaigns, and Schundler has been a frequent houseguest at Bathgate's home on the Jersey Shore. After Schundler's son, Hans Otto, was born three years ago, Schundler asked Bathgate to be the boy's godfather. And when Schundler decided to run for governor, he asked Bathgate to head up his fund-raising efforts."...
"The bottom line, Schundler said, is that the city got what it paid for with Bathgate's firm. "We won the case," he said. "We ended up being very successful in getting dollars for the residents of Jersey City."..... 25 cents/ dollar? You wonder why Jersey City is a "Distressed City" with deals like these... See the BULK LIEN SALE section for more details.... Don't miss the sub-section on Schundler's TAX LEVY SALE legislation, which had it been enacted, would have cost the city millions more in lost revenues into the pockets of Breen Capital, who lost the class action suit by 3,500 property owners to the tune of $40 MILLION and it's only the beginning... Civic activism on the part of many including myself, over 200 hours, scared Schundler into backing off... That's what you can expect if this guy gets elected Gov... Citizens fighting Schundler who will be, as in Jersey City, more concerned about political contributions than what's best for the state...
The Roseland law firm, Lum, Danzis, Drasco, Positan & Kleinberg is one of Mayor Schundler's top contributors to his re-election campaign in 1997…. $790,000 in fees in the 1998 5-year sexual harassment suit. (see Police). Colin Danzis also billed $109,000 in "start-up legal fees" at $380/hour before Schundler's Golden Door Charter School opened. There's plenty more…
August 1996, "Republican strategist Ed Rollins says street money did the trick to boost Gov. Christie Whitman's numbers in Jersey City. Mayor Bret Schundler asked for - and received- $30,000 of the 'walking -around money' that Rollins Whitman's former campaign manager, still believes was paid to black voters to help put the state's first elected woman governor in office,"
FOR THE MAIN TOPICS, CLICK BELOW
