Some Fun

I was poking around the NJ Election Law Enforcement Commission’s website the other day. That’s where you’ll find campaign finance reports filed by all your favorite state, county, and local elected officials.

Just for fun, I checked the 2008 reports filed by the campaign committee for the Moorestown Republican Council ticket of John Button, Greg Gallo, and Michael Testa. I literally gasped when I saw the committee’s total receipts for that election: $56,000. (Maybe more, since the committee’s post-election reports were not in the NJELEC online database.)

That seemed to me like a whole lot of money to win council seats in what is essentially a one-party town. For comparison, I checked reports from another one-party town, Cherry Hill, only to discover that the Moorestown total was not so outrageous after all. The winning, four-candidate Democratic slate for Cherry Hill Council in 2009 reported total receipts of $124,000!

(BTW, the Republican Jordan/Chiacchio ticket, winners of Moorestown's 2010 Council campaign, reported $17,800 in total receipts. And there was a time I would have considered that to be a lot of money.)

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the price tags. Campaigns for state office now routinely cost more than $1 million. Jon Corzine spent more than $100 million of his own money to become U.S. Senator and N.J. Guv. And President Obama could spend $1 billion on his reelection..

Still, it's depressing to realize that the "It's All About the Money" political culture extends from top to bottom of our system of government. 

A word of warning if you're tempted to poke around the NJELEC database: It’s a little quirky. Be prepared to download and install special software. And I found that Internet Explorer works best with the site.