{"id":40802236098,"date":"2011-07-21T16:10:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T20:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2011\/07\/21\/disclosure-shoe-on-other-foot-now\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:22:06","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T16:22:06","slug":"disclosure-shoe-on-other-foot-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2011\/07\/21\/disclosure-shoe-on-other-foot-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Disclosure Shoe on Other Foot Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A new 501(c)(4) \u2013 i.e. a \u201cshadow PAC\u201d \u2013 is on the block in New Jersey and the criticism has been fast and furious.\u00a0 I\u2019m referring to One New Jersey, started by a group of Democratic strategists as a counterpoint to similar Republican-sponsored efforts.<\/p>\n

The main charge leveled against this group is hypocrisy.\u00a0 During the past year, Democrats assailed two GOP non-profit groups \u2013 Reform Jersey Now which promoted Governor Christie\u2019s agenda and The Center for a Better New Jersey which assisted the Republicans\u2019 legislative redistricting efforts \u2013 for not revealing their donor lists.\u00a0 [Note:\u00a0 Reform Jersey Now did release its list shortly before it disbanded.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Taking a page from the opposition, One New Jersey\u2019s founders say they will not release their donor list either.\u00a0 That sound you now hear from the Democratic side of the aisle is the chirping of crickets.<\/p>\n

To their credit, some Democrats, such as Senator Linda Greenstein, are sticking to their guns and calling for this group to be transparent as well.\u00a0 However, there has been a deafening silence from most of her Democratic colleagues.\u00a0 As columnist Charlie Stile puts it, \u201cfear of losing\u201d rather than the taint of hypocrisy is \u201cwhat has them pacing the floor at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

I do agree that transparency should be a hallmark of government.\u00a0 Direct and immediate disclosure can do a lot more to temper the negative effects of money in politics than most laws designed to set limits and restrict funding.\u00a0 However, I\u2019ll leave the moralizing on the disclosure issue to others.\u00a0 My reason for writing this column lies more with this group\u2019s public roll out.<\/p>\n

In short, I\u2019m a bit surprised by the clumsiness with which this effort was unveiled.<\/p>\n

According to its website, the purpose of One New Jersey is to \u201cshine a light on those elected officials who act against the best interests of New Jersey\u2019s residents.\u201d\u00a0 Seems like a good idea at first glance, but it\u2019s clear they have only one party\u2019s elected officials in their sights.<\/p>\n

More importantly, it\u2019s not clear how substantive their critiques will be.\u00a0 The only \u201clight\u201d shed so far is a press release drawing attention to some bad polling numbers for the governor.\u00a0 Thanks for blowing the lid off that one!<\/p>\n

But the real clunker was how they handled the disclosure issue itself.\u00a0 First, the group\u2019s founders said that One New Jersey will abide by the law, which does not require transparency \u2013 the same argument Democrats took the Republican groups to task for.<\/p>\n

They also claimed that One New Jersey needs to keep its donors anonymous for fear of reprisal from the Christie administration.\u00a0 There may be some truth to that \u2013 Trenton politics is getting pretty personal \u2013 but I highly doubt that any of the donors to this group are not already known to the world as critics of the governor.<\/p>\n

And most incredulously, One New Jersey claims that it doesn\u2019t need to reveal its donors because their motives are pure, unlike the self-serving interests of the donors to those Republican groups.\u00a0\u00a0 All I can reply to that is, \u201cSays you!\u201d<\/p>\n

Do they really think anyone will buy that?\u00a0 In fact, it\u2019s exactly that kind of self-righteous smokescreen that gets New Jersey\u2019s media commentators\u2019 blood pumping.\u00a0 You\u2019re just asking for negative media coverage \u2013 and public cynicism \u2013 when you try to claim that justification.<\/p>\n

The astonishing part of all this is that One New Jersey was started by the principals of well-known Democratic campaign strategy firms, namely White Horse Strategies and the powerhouse Message & Media.\u00a0 These are supposedly the folks who launched the careers of Bob Menendez , Jim McGreevey and Jon Corzine.\u00a0 And this is the best opening message they could come up with?\u00a0 [Of course, two of those three clients eventually crashed and burned, so\u2026]<\/em><\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it have been better to roll out this group with something like the following statement?<\/p>\n

“Our Democratic friends in the legislature have proposed disclosure legislation for these groups, but there is no chance that Republicans will support it or the governor will sign it.\u00a0 Since the other side continues to use these groups to push their agenda, we\u2019ve decided our only response now is to fight fire with fire.\u00a0 Ultimately, we hope this effort will prod the GOP to change its mind on disclosure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course it won\u2019t, but such a statement would have given One New Jersey better political cover. Instead they fell back on the trite \u2013 \u201cwe\u2019re abiding by the law\u201d \u2013 and the perennially unbelievable \u2013 \u201cour purpose is noble\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that in December of last year, Joshua Henne, one of the masterminds behind One New Jersey, tweeted his endorsement<\/a> of a Star-Ledger editorial that \u201cReform Jersey Now must go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, as now, the rationale for withholding these groups’ donor lists rings hollow.\u00a0 It only serves to reinforce the final sentiment of that editorial<\/a>:\u00a0 “The last thing New Jersey needs is another reason to mistrust its political leaders.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ A new 501(c)(4) \u2013 i.e. a \u201cshadow PAC\u201d \u2013 is on the block in New Jersey and the criticism has been fast and furious.\u00a0 I\u2019m referring to One New Jersey, started by a group of Democratic strategists as a counterpoint to similar Republican-sponsored efforts. The main charge leveled against this group is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":939,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802236098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802236098"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802244248,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236098\/revisions\/40802244248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802236098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802236098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802236098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}