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On Saturday, the Newark Star Ledger reported that state legislative candidates spent over $25 million this primary season, smashing the all-time record for primary spending. We linked to this story in a front page diary on Sunday. We don't know yet by how much, but the $25 million figure is wrong.
The number comes from this PDF file published by NJ ELEC. The sum at the bottom of the column "Cumulative Expended" reads $25,399,423.48. The arithmetic is correct. However, much of the money "expended" during primary season is really money that candidates in uncontested primaries transfer to their general election accounts. For example, according to NJ ELEC records, of the $633,595.74 Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts "spent" from his Primary Election account, $518,924.60 was a single transfer from his Primary Election Committee to his General Election Committee, emptying his Primary account. Many other legislators, including some with several hundred thousand dollars on hand like John Adler, Joe Coniglio, Joe Kyrillos and Tom Kean Jr, likewise emptied their Primary Election accounts into General Election warchests. Other candidates , such as Steve Sweeney, have not reported transferring this money yet.
The upshot is that the figure the Star Ledger cites is not the amount of money "spent" by primary. The numbers in the "Expended" and "Cumulative Expended" columns are really meaningless. The figures in the "Closing Balance" column are also generally unreliable.
Perhaps the Star Ledger reporters should have been more vigilant, and perhaps we should have double-checked their numbers, too. The Star Ledger reporters did, however, contact NJ ELEC Executive Director Frederick Herrmann, who confirmed their numbers with this quote from the article:
"This is the largest increase that we've ever had in terms of primary spending, and it is by far the most expensive primary" Evidently, the Director of NJ ELEC doesn't even know how much candidates really spent during primary elections. He, more than anyone else, should have known better.
But seriously, how much can we really expect from NJ ELEC when the only way to see filing reports and contribution data is with a slow, clunky report viewer that doesn't work on Firefox and doesn't work on Macs?
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