Clean Elections

DENVER -- Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts (D-Camden) said that members of the unofficial legislative committee figuring out how to salvage the Clean Elections program have met at least once and are “rolling up their sleeves to do everything they can to keep the program.”

Clean Elections faces a potential constitutional hurdle and the fierce opposition of conservatives, who went looking for what they called a “secret” committee meeting. Conservative activist Steve Lonegan’s Americans for Prosperity even made a video documenting their search for the committee’s meeting.

Although Roberts convened the committee, he doesn’t know where they met either (he’s not actually a member).

“It might have been somewhere in the statehouse.”

By 3-2 vote along party lines, the Clean Elections Commission on Monday decided to designate district 14 to possibly receive public financing for the fall State Senate and Assembly campaigns.

 The district is one of three the state will monitor as it determines the path forward for clean elections, which, qualify candidates who collect 400 contributions of $10 each to receive public financing.

The Clean Elections District Selection Committee has designated the 14th district in Mercer and Middlesex counties as the split district to receive public financing. Each party is eligible to receive up to $1.6 million in funding, if they qualify.

By Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr.

Concerned about government corruption and the rising costs of political campaigns, New Jersey tested the waters of public financing for legislative races through a Clean Elections pilot project in the 2005 Assembly elections.

Now the state is at the threshold of taking a second crack at employing public financing in legislative contests.  Legislation has advanced to reauthorize another Clean Elections trial run in this November’s general elections.  The measure is scheduled for a Senate vote on Monday and could be moved to the Governor’s desk for his signature as early as next Thursday.