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The Aberdeen Democratic Party is Bought and Paid For by Outsiders
(2007-11-02)
To tell you the truth, we did not really want to know what
we found out - we try to be optimists, not cynics, but facts like
these make it difficult to keep the faith. We feel it is our civic
duty to let you know who is paying for the Aberdeen Democrats and
why.
Please note the following information is not meant to deride or comment
on the competency of any of the campaign donors, but rather to expose
a deep systemic problem which cuts at the very fabric of representative
democracy.
Our investigation began by asking “Who pays for the Aberdeen
Democrats?”, and this question was triggered by observing all
the huge signs around town. These signs are not cheap. We also noted
that the Aberdeen Democrats usually send multiple full color town-wide
mailings during any election cycle, and these are quite expensive.
In order to answer the question, we consulted the public records
available on the New Jersey
Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) web site. To quote their mission statement: “Established in
1973, ELEC monitors the campaign financing of all elections in the
State. Whether the election is for Governor or Mayor, member of the
Legislature or a City Council, candidates and campaign organizations
are required to file with the Commission contribution and expenditure
reports.” Yes, the Aberdeen Green Party finance records are
available on this website too.
We first needed to identify the established bodies in Aberdeen which
received campaign contributions on behalf of the Democrats. There
is one Continuing Political Committee (CPC), called the “Aberdeen
Democratic Executive Committee”, and then there are Joint Candidate
Committees, typically named for the campaign in question, for example “Gallo,
Drapkin, Vinci & Gumbs Aberdeen Dem Campaign 2007”. The
difference between these two types of committees is that a CPC lasts
indefinitely through many campaigns (you can think of it as a “parent” committee),
while a Candidate Committee is created for a single campaign. There
are strict rules governing the creation, reporting, and contribution
limits for these committees, and all of the information can be found
on ELEC’s web site.
We were able to identify a single CPC and numerous Candidate Committees
for the Aberdeen Democrats, going back to 1999 (the earliest year
available on the ELEC web site). We downloaded and printed copies
of the relevant documents from ELEC’s web site, including all
that had any record of contributions; we then listed each contributor
on a spreadsheet, being careful not to duplicate any contributions.
For example, all contributions from the CPC to any of the Candidate
Committees were not counted in our total, since the contributions
to the CPC itself had already been tallied.
It is important to know that the details of only certain types of
campaign contributions are required to be reported to ELEC. In particular,
depending on which election you are talking about, contributions under
$300 or under $400 do not need to be reported in detail, unless they
are made in cash. All of the contributions under these dollar amounts
are added together and reported as a lump sum to ELEC. In contrast,
contributions greater than these dollar limits need to be reported
along with the date, contributor’s name, contributor’s
employer, contributor’s address, employer’s address, and
occupation.
You can view our spreadsheet results, where we have
separately listed
contributions
to the Aberdeen Democratic Executive Committee (the
CPC) and the various Candidate
Committees. Please
note there are no ELEC records for this CPC prior to 2002,
and that the 2007 Joint Candidate Committee had only received
donations from the CPC and no other sources at the time of
this writing, so there is no contribution shown received
past 2005.
We have produced for you a summary
page, which shows
that at least 79% of campaign contributions
to the Aberdeen Democrats from the period 1999-2007 have
come from outside of Aberdeen (this is higher than the 77%
claimed on our town-wide mailer since we obtained additional
ELEC data after the mailer was produced). Both the businesses
themselves and the individual donors included in this summation
are not located in Aberdeen.
In many cases there are groups
of individual donors who are all either owners or employees
of one company. We have aggregated these donors under the heading of
that company's name, for obvious reasons. Also, we did not include donor Falk in the “outside of Aberdeen” category
since he resides in Aberdeen, even though his reasons for
contributing may be similar to those of the other donors.
We want to emphasize that contributions under the reporting limit
may or may not originate from within Aberdeen; since ELEC does not
require detailed reporting of these. Because of this, we are almost
guaranteed that more than 79% of donations to the Aberdeen
Democrats come from outside of Aberdeen. Here is the breakdown of
donations in pie chart
format.
So who are these donors, and what is their relationship to Aberdeen
Township?
- CME Associates – the Aberdeen
Township Engineer
- Monmouth County Democrats – on the surface,
this sounds benign enough, however one can also look up
who donates to these guys on ELEC. Although analysis of
the ELEC records is time consuming (we may do the Monmouth
County Democrats at a later date), some of their major contributors
are CME Associates, Hovnanian, Kaplan Properties, Kara Service Company
(Kara Homes), Schoor DePalma, Fallon & Fallon,
T&M Associates, Birdsall Engineering, Maser Consulting, … the
list goes on and on.
- Decotiis, Fitzpatrick, Gluck & Cole – a
law firm which has represented Aberdeen Township
- T&M Associates – has done engineering
work for Aberdeen Township as well as for various developers
- Fallon & Fallon – Aberdeen Township’s
Municipal Auditor
- Birdsall Engineering - has done engineering work
for Aberdeen Township as well as for various developers
- Healy & Falk – Aberdeen
Township Prosecutor
- Coppola & Coppola – the Aberdeen Township
Planner
- ESP Associates – an earlier group, some
of the employees appear connected with CME Associates
- Leckstein & Leckstein – Aberdeen Township’s
Planning Board attorney
- Interstate Electronics Inc. – owned
by Vic Scudiery, chair of the Monmouth County Democrats
- Gagliano Appraisal – Township Appraiser
- John R. Fiorino – attorney
Why should we care if the vast majority of campaign
contributions received by the Aberdeen Democrats comes from
entities which are not located in Aberdeen and whose contributing
employees do not reside in Aberdeen, and that there are so
few of these big donors? Perhaps the most obvious reason
is that the Aberdeen Democrats holding office will be prone
to making sure the people who have paid to get them in office
will be guaranteed work with Aberdeen’s
government. For instance, why would the Aberdeen Democrats
even consider selecting a different Township Engineer when
CME Associates is their heaviest donor? Are the citizens
of Aberdeen getting the best deal? Maybe there is a better
engineering firm out there which will charge less money.
Maybe there is not, maybe CME is the best, but when was the
last time the question was raised?
As councilpersons, the Green Party candidates will
not be beholden to special interests that try to buy influence
through campaign contributions (legal) or payola (not legal). We will
open the professional field up to other players so that the hired
consulting positions within Aberdeen Township are filled by the most
capable persons at the best cost. In short, we will get the best deal
possible for the citizens of Aberdeen, and our strings will not be
pulled by those with the biggest wallets.
In case you are interested, we are not the only folks
who have recognized the issue of large campaign contributions
coming from professionals. You can read more at http://www.commoncause.org/njpaytoplayreform.
Please note that Aberdeen is not in the list of towns which
have passed meaningful pay-to-play reform legislation. The
current Aberdeen Council did pass Ordinance No. 10-2007 which
prohibits political contributions from "redevelopers", however
this had no effect on the money flowing into the Aberdeen
Democrats campaign coffers since none of the donors are "redevelopers."
We believe that the chances of the Aberdeen Township Council
passing meaningful pay-to-play legislation regulating contributions
from professionals is zero as long as the Aberdeen Democrats
maintain control of the Council, and we challenge them
to prove us wrong.
Paid for by Aberdeen Green Party,
109 Wilson Ave., Aberdeen, NJ 07747
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