christie_adubato_gilmore.JPG

Ocean County Republican Chairman George Gilmore, right, is shown in this 2011 file photo with Essex County Democratic power broker Steve Adubato and Gov. Chris Christie.

(Star-Ledger file photo)

TRENTON — New Jersey government contractors banned from making major campaign contributions to state and local politicians are now donating big to a national Republican group that is showering the Garden State GOP with money, a Star-Ledger review has found.

The contributions to GOPAC — a Washington-based nonprofit political advocacy group famous for helping Republicans take control of Congress in the 1990s — reveal how such groups allow contractors to get around state and local laws designed to keep them from making big donations in New Jersey.

GOPAC says it trains Republican candidates in "effective ways to communicate conservative ideas and solutions."

But the group’s campaign-finance disclosures with the IRS reveal it has received about $1.1 million over the past five years from New Jersey donors — the majority from engineering firms, lawyers, accountants and others with one thing in common: They have big contracts with New Jersey state, county and municipal governments.

The amount GOPAC got from New Jersey donors largely matched the $1 million it gave to Republican candidates and political committees across the state, from Gov. Chris Christie to those running for municipal council spots, campaign finance records show. The donations to New Jersey candidates began coming in the same year the contractors stepped up their contributions to GOPAC, the review found.

Some of those candidates and committees were restricted from taking major donations directly from the contractors because of New Jersey’s tangled web of state and local "pay-to-play" laws aimed at keeping political money from influencing the awarding of contracts.

But the contractors are free to donate to GOPAC, which is allowed to make contributions to any candidate.

The Star-Ledger review found that at least 35 New Jersey contractors gave about $850,000 to GOPAC from 2009 to 2013. Those contractors made more than $1.5 billion from state, county, municipal and other government contracts over the same years.

While some of the individual donations weren’t huge and there’s nothing illegal about what GOPAC is doing, good-government advocates say it’s an end run around the laws at the state and local level.

"This is Exhibit A of how it is easy to get around laws, even strict laws like New Jersey’s famous pay-to-play rules," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director for the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics. "If there are loopholes, that means people can legally have their cake and eat it, too."

Under state pay-to-play laws, any contractor with more than $17,500 in state contracts is barred from giving major contributions to candidates for governor, legislative leadership committees or state, county and municipal political parties. And many towns and counties have enacted their own restrictions to close a loophole in the state law that allows county and municipal contractors to donate to local candidates if contracts are awarded in a "fair and open" process.

BUILDING A FARM TEAM

GOPAC’s president, David Avella, said his group complies with the law and the donations are not aimed at circumventing pay-to-play rules.

"Our mission is ultimately to build a farm team of Republican candidates who get elected to state and local offices, and we help groom them and guide them to run for higher office," Avella said. "It’s a message we take to investors all across the country, including New Jersey."

Republican leaders stress that GOPAC gets money from all over and helps candidates across the nation. About 10 percent of its donations from 2009 to 2013 came from New Jersey, including from some of the state’s biggest public contractors:

• CJ Hesse Inc., a road construction company that has been paid $13.2 million by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority since 2009, is barred from making political donations directly to state political parties and legislative leadership committees by the state’s pay-to-play law. Since 2009, Hesse has donated $125,000 to GOPAC, which over the same period gave to three political committees Hesse couldn’t donate to directly: $99,600 to the Republican State Committee, $80,000 to the Assembly Republican leadership committee and $50,000 to the state Senate Republican leadership committee.

•âThe engineering firm T&M Associates has made $2.2 million from state contracts since 2010, barring it from donating to state and county political parties. The firm has given $61,100 to GOPAC.

• In October 2011, just three months before Remington & Vernick, Birdsall Services Group, T&M Associates and CME Associates signed certifications in Berkeley Township that they had not "made any reportable contributions" to its candidates, the firms made big contributions to GOPAC. That same month GOPAC gave more than $10,000 to Berkeley municipal candidates.

•âCME Associates, an engineering firm, donated $52,000 to GOPAC in 2010 and 2011. GOPAC donated $17,800 to Republican candidates in Sayreville during those years, during which CME earned more than $3.5 million from the town. Sayreville has a strict pay-to-play law that bans large donations from its contractors.

•âWolff & Samson — the law firm run by former Port Authority Chairman David Samson — is prohibited from making contributions to political parties because of its $1 million in state contracts from 2011 to 2013. It has given $7,500 to GOPAC since 2011.

None of the firms returned requests for comment.

Sayreville Mayor Kennedy O’Brien, who was among the GOPAC recipients, said in a statement: "I am not involved in any PAC, I have no say over how they operate, nor do I have any control over where a local engineering firm donates its money. I will say CME has provided tremendous value to this borough over the years and our decision to retain them is based strictly on merit."

Mark D. Sheridan, attorney for the Republican State Committee, said, "The suggestion that contributions are being made to GOPAC for the purpose of circumventing pay-to-play is baseless. NJGOP did not solicit contributions to GOPAC at all and it certainly did not solicit them for the purpose of circumventing pay-to-play."

GRASSROOTS

GOPAC came to fame under former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who used it to put Republicans on the same page by instructing them on what to say in their campaigns. His use of GOPAC was considered a key part of Republicans’ 1994 takeover of Congress.

GOPAC wasn’t always a big player in New Jersey politics. Prior to 2009, Garden State residents made up a small fraction of its donor base, mainly from individuals through contributions of no more than a few hundred dollars at a time.

Trenton lobbyist Steve Some became GOPAC’s New Jersey chairman in 2009, while Ocean County GOP Chairman George Gilmore — an important ally of Christie’s — began getting involved in its fundraising. The next year, Gilmore joined its national board of directors and took over as New Jersey chairman.

Instantly, political donations picked up.

After raising just $14,800 in 2008, GOPAC took in $214,850 from New Jersey the following year — with construction and engineering firms as its biggest donors.

The size of each check changed as well. In 2007 and 2008, the average New Jersey donor to GOPAC gave about $170. In 2009, the average donation was $2,500.

At the same time, GOPAC’s contributions to New Jersey candidates and campaign committees increased. In 2007 and 2008, it didn’t donate at all in New Jersey. In 2009, it gave $146,312, followed by $291,775 in 2010; $318,200 in 2011; $83,800 in 2012; and $167,800 last year.

Asked about the jump in donations, Avella — GOPAC’s president — said it may have had something to do with Frank Donatelli taking over as the group’s national chairman in 2009.

"Frank has focused the organization on making sure that we are active in states that maybe don’t have Republican majorities that we can help move to having Republican majorities," Avella said. "New Jersey fits in that category."

Gilmore said GOPAC’s aim is not to move money from one place to another to avoid pay-to-play laws or contribution limits — a process known as "wheeling."

"There is no wheeling involved in GOPAC," Gilmore said. "People can make donations. They have no say in where those donations go. Some are spent in New Jersey. Some are spent outside New Jersey."

Gilmore said most of the money GOPAC raised came from events it held in the state with guest speakers including Gingrich and conservative icons such as Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and John Bolton, the former ambassador to the United Nations.

"They support candidates in New Jersey, but they also support candidates from outside of New Jersey, where I think they can have an impact," Gilmore said.

All in the timing

The records suggest some of GOPAC’s donations got around limits on how much it can give to the Republican State Committee. By law, it can only give $25,000 a year to New Jersey political parties. But in 2010, at least $45,600 in GOPAC donations would appear to have made their way to the Republican State Committee.

That year, GOPAC gave $24,000 to the party directly — just short of its maximum donation. But on Oct. 22, 2010, GOPAC gave $7,200 to the joint campaign account of Fair Lawn council members Ed Trawinski and Jeanne Baratta, $7,200 to Meadowlands United PAC and $7,200 to the Carlstadt council members David Stoltz and Richard Bartlett. Within the next three days, each of those campaign funds donated $7,200 to the Republican State Committee.

Trawinski and Baratta — who both left the council after the 2013 election — said they knew nothing about the GOPAC contribution in phone interviews with The Star-Ledger. The treasurer for Meadowlands United, Jason Dechert, could not be reached for comment, nor could Stoltz or Bartlett.

Such donations to groups like GOPAC are similar to a network of 10 Middlesex County Democratic political action committees that took big money from contractors and distributed it throughout the county and state, as outlined in a Star-Ledger investigation in 2012.

CALLS FOR A FIX

Back then, Christie criticized Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) for alleged ties to the PACs, saying he had to "answer some questions from all of you about his use of PAC money to wheel it around the state."

However, a spokesman for Christie declined to address GOPAC or Gilmore’s role in it, instead taking the Democrat-led Legislature to task for not enacting ethics reforms he proposed in 2010.

"The governor has put forward and on multiple occasions called on the Legislature to pass his comprehensive ethics and campaign finance reforms that included a proposal to fix pay-to-play and ban the sort of wheeling you describe," Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts said. "The Legislature and the Democrats who lead it remain completely without appetite to deal with it and have steadfastly refused to pay these issues any attention."

GOPAC donated $2,600 to Christie’s 2009 campaign for governor and made a $3,800 donation to his re-election campaign.

Jeff Brindle, executive director of the state Election Law Enforcement Commission, said GOPAC’s activities in New Jersey reinforce the need for a single, universal pay-to-play law that applies to state and local candidates. The state’s current law, he said, is full of loopholes.

"You’re not connecting a federal PAC with a particular candidate, or even necessarily with the political parties. It’s absolutely less transparent and less accountable," Brindle said. "The most important thing is to have straightforward laws that are understandable."

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