Campaign Finance: Compliance and Budget.

During my summer internship for the Dini for Hoboken Campaign I was lucky enough to join many meetings with the campaign's compliance consultant. A compliance consultant is necessary for a campaign in order to ensure that the campaign’s financial activity is both lawful and transparent. Before my internship, I was unaware of the strict laws pertaining to the financial sector of a campaign and I thought that a campaign had full freedom to do whatever they wanted with the money they raised. However, this assumption was quickly disproved. One of these laws in Hoboken is that developers with redevelopment contracts cannot make political contributions. This is crucial because if a candidate makes deals with developers before getting elected,

they are essentially required to allow developers to continue to build, and this may not align with the general populations interests for the city. One of Dini’s main goals was to preserve the historical charm of Hoboken and, in turn, lessen the building of skyscrapers.

This goal hit home with a lot of Hoboken residents we spoke to, however, if she made a

deal with developers prior to the election she would be unable to truly fulfill this pillar of her campaign.

Additionally, campaigns are prohibited from receiving contributions from certain professional firms with city contracts. This law is incredibly important because if certain firms were able to donate to a campaign they may be doing so solely to secure or maintain city contracts. Additionally, if a candidate received a large donation from a firm they may be more inclined to give this firm a contract without any regard to if they are deserving of it, provoking corruption among businesses.

Finally, in order to truly make sure that no “pay to play” practices occur within a campaign, each candidate must make a contribution disclosure statement and submit it to NJ elec: New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission. This is beneficial not only to confirm that no illegal activity is happening but also for the other candidates to see how well their competitors are doing in the realm of raising and spending money. I was able to review all of the other candidates' contribution disclosure statements and this gave insight on how much Dini was raising with respect to the other candidates. Something important to note is that in order to submit an accurate contribution disclosure statement, the compliance consultant and campaign manager must keep record of every donation, expense, receipt, invoice and checks. For Dini’s campaign we used a software called Warchest to keep track of campaign finances which provides campaigns with accurate financial analysis and planning. There are many more laws pertaining to campaign finances that I didn’t go over in this post but hopefully this can help you gain some insight on how to run a lawful campaign!