EDITORIAL, Aug. 11
Back in the 1970s, New Jersey distinguished itself by becoming the first state in the nation to provide partial public financing of gubernatorial campaigns. Financed by the $1 voluntary checkoff on state income tax returns, the gubernatorial campaign fund kicked in $2 in public funds for every $1 the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor raised privately, and capped spending by both candidates in the general election.
By and large, the system has worked well. Since 1981, every major party candidate for governor has accepted public financing (by law, it is a voluntary program) and, with it, disclosure of the names of all the people who contributed to their campaigns and the amount of money they contributed.
There were loopholes, of course. Because public financing in the early years extended only to the general election, the big money flowed to candidates in the primaries. Later, when the law was expanded to include public financing of primary campaigns, the big money shifted direction and started flowing away from gubernatorial hopefuls altogether and toward candidates for the legislature.
Such is the nature of campaign-finance reform. With every loophole that is closed, another opens. Ambitious politicians, wealthy individuals and influential interest groups always seem to find a way to subvert meaningful campaign-finance reform, coming up with new and creative methods for raising and spending massive amounts of money on increasingly expensive election campaigns.
The latest loophole to be exploited is Section 527 of the U.S. Tax Code, a provision that permits tax-exempt groups to use undisclosed donors to pay for advertising campaigns. Increasingly, such groups are buying time for so-called "advocacy" advertisements that are clearly designed to help get a particular candidate elected, either by strongly supporting that candidate’s position on an issue or, more commonly, by criticizing the politics, attacking the values or assassinating the character of the favored candidate’s opponent.
These ads have started appearing with frightening regularity in presidential and senatorial campaigns. Atlantic County state Sen. Bill Gormley, who finished second in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate in June, was on the receiving end of some of these ads – and he accuses the tax-exempt groups that targeted him of posing as grass-roots organizations and hiding behind the "advocacy" label. "When my name is in their ads negatively 23 times," he charged, "that’s not issue advocacy."
Sen. Gormley and the New Jersey Legislature may not be able to do a whole lot about the proliferation of "527 groups" and their sinister influence on campaigns for federal office. But they can take steps to ensure that the same unhealthy condition does not afflict gubernatorial races in the Garden State.
Sen. Gormley is the sponsor of a bill – S-1468 – that would strip away some of the camouflage worn by 527 groups seeking to insinuate themselves into gubernatorial politics. Under the bill, when any person who helped form or operate a 527 group runs for governor, the group would have to disclose the names and amounts given by all donors, and a complete list of all the group’s expenditures, from the date the group was formed. A companion bill in the Assembly – A-2647 – is sponsored by Essex County Republicans Joel Weingarten and Kevin O’Toole.
It’s a small step, admittedly. We can already see some future gubernatorial candidate denying that he or she played any formal role in "forming or operating" a 527 group that is busy pounding away at a political opponent. But, in the overall scheme of things, half a loaf of improvement is a whole lot better than none. And this is one area of modern political campaigning that is crying out for a whole bakery’s worth of reform. The legislature should pass the measure – and Gov. Christie Whitman should sign it into law – without delay.