John Wisniewski. | AP Photo/Julio Cortez Wisniewski's firm violated local pay-to-play law, N.J. town says

Democratic candidate for governor John Wisniewski’s law firm has been stripped of some business, after a town it worked for determined the firm violated its anti-pay-to-play law.

In a Feb. 3 letter, Keyport Borough Attorney Joseph Baumann, Jr. informed Wisniewski that his firm, Wisniewski & Associates, “has been disqualified from further representation of the Borough as of this date.”


“Please have all Borough files forwarded to our office with a memorandum summarizing the status of all matters,” Baumann wrote.

Wisniewski, who has been in the Assembly for 21 years, was Keyport’s borough attorney in 2009, when Keyport passed its strict law meant to combat campaign contributions from influencing public contracts. The ordinance bars the borough’s professional service contractors from giving more than $300 per election to an expansive list of campaign entities, including county political parties, that could influence the town’s elections.

But Baumann found that Wisniewski’s firm had donated $1,000 to the Monmouth County Democratic Party in 2014. That year, his firm was paid $14,751 for legal services in the town, according to disclosures filed with the New Jersey State Election Law Enforcement Commission.

POLITICO New Jersey reported in November that Wisniewski had donated nearly $18,000 to the Monmouth County Democratic Party while his law firm worked for Keyport. But Wisniewski made those donations through his Assembly campaign account, which appeared to get around Keyport's law because it did not mention donations from such accounts.

The $1,000 donation, however, came directly from Wisniewski's firm, violating the law, according to Baumann.

On the same day Wisniewski received the letter from Baumann, he responded that the donation was made “inadvertently” and wrote a letter to the Monmouth County Democratic chairman asking for a refund.

Keyport had once been a major client of Wisniewski’s firm — the town paid it nearly $600,000 from 2006 to 2015. But Wisniewski & Associates’ work for the town has recently trailed off. In 2010, when Wisniewski was borough attorney, his firm earned more than $100,000 from Keyport. In 2015, when Wisniewski was no longer borough attorney, the firm earned just $10,639 from the town.

According to Wisniewski’s letter, the firm was reappointed to its position as Keyport’s special Tax Defense Counsel to represent the town against homeowners who appeal their property taxes on Jan. 1, 2017.

If a ban against Wisniewski's firm working for Keyport stands, it will last four years. The ban, though, wouldn't be a major financial hit for his law firm, which was paid $345,997 from public entities in 2015.

But it could be a more serious burden for Wisniewski’s credibility in his gubernatorial campaign, since the assemblyman is attempting to run to the left of frontrunner Phil Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive and U.S. ambassador to Germany accused by Wisniewski of buying off party bosses with hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions.

Wisniewski is now running for governor as a “main street businessman,” and he was the only state lawmaker to endorse Bernie Sanders for president. The Vermont senator, who railed against the corrupting influence of money in politics during his presidential campaign, has not endorsed Wisniewski's candidacy.

Through allies and former staffers, Wisniewski has also been linked to a network of PACs that skirted pay-to-play laws around Middlesex County.

“He’s been attacking Murphy as the hand-picked choice of insiders,” said Seton Hall political science professor Matt Hale. "Regardless of the facts of this particular case, it just smells like an insider deal, a backroom deal, and his chief argument has been, ‘I’m the honest broker who fights against the power.'"

Wisniewski campiagn manager Robert Becker said that's not the case.

"One inadvertent contribution — which has been corrected — does not remotely equate to the millions in Goldman Sachs money being spread throughout New Jersey by Phil Murphy to buy the election," Becker said.