BY LEV D. ZILBERMINTS
NEWARK / TRENTON – Ras Baraka, the Mayor of Newark, and a candidate for New Jersey Governor in 2025, is allegedly in violation of New Jersey Election Law Enforcement (ELEC) laws regarding campaign finance reports. Reportedly, so are eight members of the Municipal Council that ran on Baraka’s slate in the 2022 election.
According to newjerseyglobe.com, “The Team Baraka joint campaign did not file 29 – day pre-election, 11-day pre-election, or 20-day pre-election reports despite collecting $713,375 from 590 contributions and spending $731,728. They also failed to report 48-hour reports in advance of Election Day. They potentially face over $150,000 in fines.
Baraka is no stranger to campaign finance violations. His campaign paid a $37,993 fine for late filings in his 2014 mayoral campaign. He filed reports more than late in 2022.
Baraka is expected to seek public financing for his governor’s race, but he’ll face a series of audits before ELEC approves any matching funds,” newjerseyglobe.com wrote in its March 27, 2024 online edition.
According to elec.nj.gov, the current Acting Executive Director is Joseph W. Donohue. A public meeting was held on April 16, at 25 South Stockton Street, 5th floor, Trenton, New Jersey.
According to the agenda, the Acting Executive Director discussed staff activities, campaign financing, and other matters of concern and interest to the Commission.
Also, according to the agenda, there was a public hearing concerning the readoption of Commission Regulations with amendments.
According to the April 19, 2023 online issue of newjerseyglobe.com, Ras “Baraka did not file any campaign finance reports for all of 2022. Neither has his affiliated joint candidate committee, which includes himself and the nine city council candidates he initially backed in last year’s election.”
It must be noted that newjerseyglobe.com received its formation directly from the ELEC website, elec.nj.gov. For this reason, the numbers newjerseyglobe.com cites can be considered credible and trustworthy.
The 2023 newjerseyglobe.com story continues, “Baraka’s most recent available report is from the fourth quarter of 2021, and even that was quite a bit late; he filed it this February, more than a year after he was required to do so.
In his 2021 report, Baraka reported $487,033 cash-on-hand, while his joint candidate committee had another $21,070. But since those are from before Baraka’s campaign really kicked into gear, there could be hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of expenditures and contributions that the voting public is unable to see.
Baraka’s campaign is clearly still active, given that earlier this month, he filed paperwork with ELEC for a 2026 re-election campaign.
Reached by phone, Baraka’s campaign treasurer, David McKnight, had no comment on the missing forms and directed the New Jersey Globe to contact PKF O’Connor Davies, an accounting firm which he said handles compliance for the campaign. A representative at PKF O’Connor Davies did not immediately respond.
Baraka himself also did not respond to a Tuesday afternoon call to his cell phone.
Given that Baraka won the 2022 race with more than 80 percent of the vote, it’s understandable that there has been little attention given to the state of his finances. That won’t be true, though, if Baraka chooses to run for governor in 2025, which he is widely expected to consider doing.
This isn’t the first time Baraka has run afoul of ELEC rules. In 2021, ELEC fined Baraka more than $30,000 for a huge assortment of campaign finance violations his 2014 campaign committed – 264 of them in total.
Most of those violations were for late or incomplete filings, but six were for the more substantial problem of accepting donations over the contribution limit. Baraka’s campaign blamed the issues on his ex-campaign treasurer, Frederick Murphy, who ended up serving jail time for embezzling campaign funds.
“This settlement, and the court’s earlier order, affirmatively eliminates any suggestion that the Mayor or his campaign was in any way complicit or did anything wrong,” said Angelo Genova, an attorney representing the Baraka campaign, after ELEC issued its fines in 2021.
“Thanks to new limits that the state legislature and Gov. Phil Murphy recently put on ELEC, Baraka may not be subject to similar punishment this time. The Elections Transparency Act, which Murphy signed on April 3, puts a two-year statute of limitations on ELEC complaints, down from the current limit of ten years, meaning that ELEC will have to work fast if it intends to take action on Baraka’s late reports.”
The members of the NJ ELEC are Thomas H. Prol, Chairman; Ryan Peters, Commissioner; Norma R. Evans, Commissioner; Jon-Henry Barr, Commissioner.
It should be noted that ELEC has an Acting Executive Director, Joseph W. Donohue.
According to elec.nj.gov, ELEC has training webinars and seminars for campaign compliance and eFile Training. These are held April 2, May 1, May 2, June 12, July 9, August 6, September 12, October 3 and October 8, 2024 online. They start at 10:00 a.m. and run for approximately 2 hours, states the ELEC website.
CPC/PPC Compliance Seminars and eFile Training are held April 3, May 15, June 13, July 11, August 8, September 10, and October 10, 2024 online.
In-Person Seminars alternate between CPC and Campaign. The dates are March 27 – CPC; April 24 and June 19 – Campaign; June 26 – CPC; September 25 – Campaign; and October 2 – CPC.
Given the enormous amount of online resources, it is unclear why the joint campaign of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and his allies failed to submit accurate information to ELEC on time. With the race for New Jersey Governor heating up, the rivals of Ras Baraka might well focus on anything that might give them an advantage.
