FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Plainfield, NJ – Republican Candidate for the New Jersey State Senate in the 22nd Legislative District, William Michelson released the following statements in response to recent controversy surrounding Senate President Scutari’s campaign finances.

“The New Jersey Globe published a detailed article on May 18, analyzing the amounts of cash on hand of our legislative candidates, as of the 29-day pre-election reports filed with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC). I am the Republican candidate for the State Senate this year, in Legislative District 22; I live in Plainfield. It said that my adversary, Senator Nicholas Scutari, has 839 times as much money in his campaign account as I do.

It is certainly remarkable to see such a war chest. How much of it could a candidate use? It is instructive to see where this enormous number comes from. The law allows candidates, whether they win or not, to carry forward funds from a campaign to a future campaign, and also to give to another political committee.

Mr. Scutari has filed dozens of campaign finance reports. The oldest one available on the ELEC website, for his County Freeholder race in 1999, showed receipts of about $75,000, only one-seventh of which was spent. And that has been his documented practice ever since. By the time of his first run for the State Senate in 2005, he went in with $55,000 in hand. That year, he received another $113,000, only about half of which was spent on the campaign. Going into the 2007 Senate race, he carried forward $56,714. Going into the 2011 race, he had $165,004. Going into the 2013 race, the number was $299,479. Going into the 2017 race, he had $354,969. Going into the 2021 race, in which I was his adversary, he had $783,612. And going into the current race, the ELEC report shows he has $2,047,100.

Each report shows the contributors who gave over $300. Smaller contributions do not have to be separately listed. Throughout these years, the overwhelming number of contributors are lawyers, other professionals such as planners, architects and accountants, building trades contractors, labor unions, PACs, other Democratic candidate committees, and county or municipal employees.

The amounts he spent on these campaigns have been relatively puny, and not even necessary. The Republican candidates against him were rarely viable, due to the lopsided party registration in District 22, and he had little real opposition in the primaries at all.

It is therefore impossible to believe that any of the people who gave him contributions thought he needed them. This contrasts with my race, in which I obviously need every dime. So why were these contributions made? Can you spell “PAY TO PLAY”???

One can assume that all these contributors wanted something. Given Senator Scutari’s roles at the local, county and state levels all at the same time, that’s a lot of something. I wonder how many of them got back whatever they wanted from him.

Senator Scutari has been recently targeted by ELEC for extensive violations in his campaign finance reports over the years. Blameworthiness is disputed. How instructive it is then, to note that he was the main sponsor of recent legislation which gutted ELEC, made its Commissioners and Director mere stooges of the Governor, and shortened the allowable time for investigations and charges from 10 years down to 2 years.

It is regrettably not illegal in New Jersey to combine these roles, though it should be. Some of this is likely to fall soon, because a courageous Federal Judge has ruled that the practice of giving candidates the “party line” in primaries is probably unconstitutional. That practice has been the very cornerstone of the power of Machines, and no one plays it better than Senator Scutari, the smug, self-righteous King of the Machine in Union County. He was the longtime Chairman of the Linden Municipal Republican Committee – and remains a powerful force there – and is now Chairman of the Union County Democratic Committee, as well as being the Senate President. This is the perfect Machine, but if the people are ever to have real democracy and real choices of leadership, it needs to be dismantled.

A vote for me, as the Republican candidate for the Senate, will be a vote for reform, and for elimination of the Machine. It isn’t serving the people, only its insiders profit from it.”

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