Over half of candidates qualify for public funds
Benchmark ensures clean elections proposal will be considered in '09
BY CHRIS GAETANO
Staff Writer

"[The original legislation] had a strong indication in there on what it would take to move ahead and all those indications have been met and more." - Linda Greenstein Assemblywoman (D-14)

The number of fair and clean election-certified candidates crept past the 50 percent mark on Friday, officially making the program "successful" as defined in the language of the legislation that created it.

New Jersey Senate candidate Ed Selby and Assembly candidates Toni Zimmer and Pat Walsh, all running in District 24 (Hunterdon/Morris/Sussex), registered their more than 400 qualifying donations with the state, making them eligible to receive public campaign funding through the Fair and Clean Elections Pilot Project (FACE) their districts were chosen to participate in.

This pushes the total number of candidates eligible to receive public funding through this program to 12 out of 18 total. This stands in stark contrast to the previous clean elections pilot program in 2005, in which only two out of 10 possible candidates were able to qualify.

"[This] milestone is a testament to the fact that clean elections can and will work in New Jersey," said Assemblyman Bill Baroni, one of the legislation's writers as well as a participant in the resultant program. "I'm pleased that this program is continuing to gain momentum and has reached a level of success that has hushed many of its skeptics."

FACE was developed as an attempt to blunt the influence of special interests on electoral politics by providing public funding for candidates seeking state Senate or Assembly seats. The program is currently being piloted in District 24, which has traditionally gone to the Republicans, District 37 (Bergen), which has traditionally gone to the Democrats, and District 14 (Middlesex/Mercer), which is viewed by both parties as a contested territory where neither dominates. Participants must collect at least 400 donations of $10 each to earn access to $50,000 in public money. Each donation they receive beyond that increases the amount, to a maximum of $100,000 for 800 donors. Meanwhile, candidates can raise up to $10,000 in seed money donations that cannot exceed $500 each to help finance their quest for qualifying contributions.

District 14, however, is operating under a different funding formula than the other two, which candidates have said is due to higher than average campaign costs there. In this race, 800 donations will net a candidate $534,375. According to candidates there, this is because campaigning in the contested district tends to be much more expensive.

The text of the legislation defines success as "at least 50 percent of the candidates who were members of political parties and were seeking election for either the office of member of the Senate or the office of member of the General Assembly became certified candidates and did not withdraw from that designation."

According to Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein (D-14), another of the bill's writers participating in the pilot, FACE's success means that an enhanced version of the program will be proposed for the 2009 election cycle. While the specifics of the bill's next iteration would need to be worked out through new legislation, Greenstein said that it might expand the initiative's reach into the primary election season and could increase its geographic span into more legislative districts. While the new version would need to be approved by the state Legislature, she is confident that the pilot's success will make its reauthorization a simple matter.

"[The original legislation] had a strong indication in there on what it would take to move ahead and all those indications have been met and more," Greenstein said. "I have a feeling that anyone who tried to work against it now would be hard-pressed. I think we more than met the threshold and I'm very pleased, I really am."

District 14 Libertarian Assembly candidates Jason Scheurer and Ray Cregle are still in the process of collecting the 400 donations needed to qualify for public funding, though Lou Jasikoff, campaign manager and state party chair, said they are already halfway to their goal and that they anticipate being certified by Labor Day. Jasikoff said the pair have been getting the most support from the over-55 community "because people have the time to actually talk."

Third parties have been highly critical of FACE, not so much due to the general principles behind it, but because they feel that the specific language of the legislation itself shortchanges anyone not running under a major party ticket. While the Libertarian Party has to collect the same number of donations that major party candidates do, they will only be eligible for half the public funds, or, in the case of the 14th District, one-tenth.

"The clean part is not too bad, but obviously it's not fair at all," Jasikoff said.

He went on to say that he felt it wasn't fair that candidates would have needed to qualify by Aug. 17 in order to be listed as a FACE candidate on the ballot when the deadline to actually qualify as a FACE candidate is Sept. 30. Missing this deadline means that even if the Libertarians manage to qualify for public funding, their status as FACE participants will be conspicuously absent from the ballot. This also means that they will be unable to submit a 250-word statement on the sample ballot sent to voters, which Jasikoff said would be their only opportunity to send a direct mailing.

"Not only are we outnumbered 10-1, we're also prejudiced by this because people are going to look at the ballot and make the assumption that [our candidates are] either unfair or unclean or both, which is totally erroneous," Jasikoff said.

The other major party candidates who have surpassed the requisite 400 donations now include Bill Baroni (R-14), Tom Goodwin (R-14), Adam Bushman (R-14), Seema Singh (D-14), Wayne DeAngelo (D-14), Steve Oroho (R-24), Allison Little-McHose (R-24) and Gary Chiusano (R-24).