New Jersey’s 2025 gubernatorial election could be the least transparent in memory thanks to a new campaign finance law that lets super PACs keep their donors secret until shortly before the primary.
It will be the biggest test yet of the financial overhaul, and supporters of a few candidates have already sought to leverage it by forming independent expenditure committees that can raise and spend unlimited amounts.
With a crowded field of 10 major candidates looking to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy next year, more of these independent groups could spring up — offering donors a way to influence the election while giving the public, the news media and political opponents little time to find out who they are.
It will come amid a massive political realignment in New Jersey, where the fall of its one-of-a-kind ballot design is likely to diminish the state’s longtime boss system and make money an even more important factor. And it is one of just two gubernatorial elections this year, making it a closely watched contest in Donald Trump’s first year returning to the White House.
In essence, the new Elections Transparency Act allows traditional super PACs that had previously disclosed donors and spending with regularity the option to register as independent expenditure groups — limiting their disclosures about advertising to 11 days before a primary election and 20 days after it.
Aaron McKean, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, said voters should know who’s funding the ads they’re seeing well before the election, not just days before it or weeks after.
“The key reason that reporting like this is important is so that voters have information to make decisions when they’re evaluating their choices on the ballot, and failing to put in meaningful disclosure means voters don’t get that information,” McKean said in a phone interview. “It’s not useful to a voter to find out 20 days after an election who was funding all those ads.”
But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s nothing stopping these groups from going above and beyond New Jersey’s lax reporting requirements and voluntarily disclosing where their money is coming from and how they’re spending it.
So far, allies of three Democratic gubernatorial candidates have formed “independent expenditure committees” that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to boost their chosen candidates. One of them appears to have already spent millions.
“We do not discourage it,” Amanda Haines, executive director of the Election Law Enforcement Commission, said of going above and beyond the law’s requirements in a phone interview. “We will assist anybody who desires to disclose voluntarily in the same way we assist all of our filers.”
In fact, one of the groups is already doing that.
“We really want to be a different type of organization going into the next few months. Part of that is the approach to voter outreach. Part of it is increasing openness and transparency,” said Mark Nicastre, spokesperson for Building Bridges Voter Project, an independent expenditure committee backing former Senate President Steve Sweeney’s campaign for governor.
Since forming in April 2024, Building Bridges has filed non-required quarterly reports with the Election Law Enforcement Commission detailing where the $600,000 it’s raised has come from and where the $400,000 it’s spent has gone. The bulk of its funds — $500,000 — has come from the Carpenters Union, long a supporter of Sweeney and South Jersey Democrats.
Focus on ‘dark money’
The Elections Transparency Act, signed by Murphy in 2023 to overhaul New Jersey’s campaign finance system, created a new category of political committees called independent expenditure groups. At the time, the new category was touted as a way to require so-called dark money groups — political nonprofits that run ads supporting or opposing candidates without revealing who’s funding them — to divulge those who give more than $7,500 if they engage in electioneering within 30 days of an election.
In 2022, a year before the Election Transparency Act’s enactment, the Coalition for Integrity ranked the strength of New Jersey’s campaign finance laws in the bottom half of country, at 32. The Washington nonprofit has not published a more recent ranking.
But the Elections Transparency Act also allowed more traditional super PACs that had been issuing quarterly financial reports, as well as 48-hour reports close to elections, to instead become independent expenditure groups. These new groups are only required to file disclosure reports 11 days before primary elections and 20 days after, with nothing in between. For general elections, they have to file 29 days before the election, 11 days before and 20 days after. After that, they’re not required to disclose anything until the next election they spend money on.
Perhaps the biggest example is American Representative Majority, a super PAC unofficially run by South Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross that for years has spent millions to influence New Jersey’s elections. In September 2023, it opted to become an independent expenditure group. Its last disclosure, which reported $1.9 million in debt to Norcross, was filed in November 2023.
New Jersey Education Association President Sean Spiller and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka also have recently formed independent expenditure groups backing their gubernatorial candidacies. Neither has publicly disclosed its donors, but it’s possible to trace much of their funding through other means.
The pro-Spiller group, Working New Jersey, has estimated it will spend $35 million to back Spiller’s campaign. While Working New Jersey has not publicly disclosed its funding, the NJEA has made no secret that it’s funding it. And reports filed with the IRS by NJEA-funded super PAC Garden State Forward show it donated $7.4 million to Working New Jersey in August and September.
“Working New Jersey is proudly funded by NJEA because they know Spiller’s record of fighting for working families and that he is the only candidate in the race who has represented a state-wide constituency,” said Eddie Vale, a spokesperson for the group. But while acknowledging the union as the group’s funding source, Vale said it does not plan to file more reports than required. “We will continue to fully comply with New Jersey’s laws but won’t be showing the exact details of our work in a way that will allow the other campaigns and IEs to read our playbook,’ he said.
One New Jersey United, the PAC backing Baraka, has also not publicly disclosed its donors, though reports filed with the Federal Election Commission show that a different pro-Baraka super PAC, Unite PAC, donated its remaining $635,000 to the new group before shutting down. Unite PAC’s single biggest donor was Mohammed Naeem, founder of a group of drug treatment companies. He gave $45,000.
“While we cannot engage with these groups, we strongly encourage them to voluntarily disclose their donors on a quarterly basis,” Baraka said in a statement. “Ultimately though, it’s on us at the state level to strengthen our campaign finance laws and require timely disclosure of contributions for all entities. Transparency fosters accountability, and ensuring the public has access to this information is crucial to protecting the integrity of our elections.”
The chair of One New Jersey United, attorney Kyana Woolridge, could not be reached for comment.
While only the pro-Spiller independent expenditure group has been especially active, it’s early in the gubernatorial campaign. And shady political organizations have already taken advantage of the Election Transparency Act’s gaping loopholes. Weeks before the 2023 general election, a shadowy group called “Jersey Freedom” began promoting “conservative” alleged phantom candidates designed to draw votes away from the actual Republican candidates on the ballot. Other than their promotion by the group, they ran no discernible campaign and eschewed media interviews.
Jersey Freedom’s first report, filed 11 days before the election, showed only debt to a printing company. It was not until it filed its post-election report, 20 days after the election, that it disclosed receiving $225,000 from a group funded by the South Jersey Democratic machine.