The mud is flying in the NJ Governor's Race, as the state's Department of Banking and Insurance is looking into whether GOP Candidate Doug Forrester's self-financing of his campaign is illegal under state law.
More below the fold....
Under NJ State law, insurance companies doing business in NJ cannot make political campaign contributions. As the
Star Ledger has been reporting for the last couple of days, Democratic party officials, along with the DOBI, are looking into whether Doug Forrester's position at Heartland Fidelity Insurance prohibits him from financing his own campaign, while Forrester is apparently scared enough that he's asked for his own advisory opinion on the subject.
Democrats contend that Forrester is banned from making political donations in New Jersey because he is majority owner of Heartland Fidelity Insurance Co., which is based in Washington, D.C. and provides specialized insurance coverage to clients of another Forrester firm, BeneCard Services Inc. Many of those clients are local governments and school boards in New Jersey.
"If you are doing business in New Jersey as an insurance company, you can't contribute to any campaign, whether it's yours or someone else's," Assemblyman Neil Cohen (D-Union) said yesterday. As chairman of the Assembly Insurance Committee, Cohen called on the state insurance commissioner to conduct an investigation and possibly hold hearings.
On Monday, Forrester asked acting Insurance Commissioner Donald Bryan for a declaration that Heartland is not subject to regulation in New Jersey. Jaimee Gilmartin, spokeswoman for the Department of Banking and Insurance, said officials still are reviewing Forrester's letter.
Peter McDonough, spokesman for Heartland, said Democrats are flat wrong. "No business is transacted in New Jersey (by Heartland) and that's the fundamental question," he said.
If this is true, then it also means that Forrester's donations to State and County party organizations will have to be rescinded. This has the potential to the put the NJ GOP into an even bigger tailspin than it is already in. Some sources are even suggesting that Forrester could have to pull out of the race entirely if it turns out his role at Heartland violates State law.
From today's Politics NJ:
If DOBI concludes that Heartland is not involved in the insurance business in New Jersey-- that Forrester's contributions are, therefore, all legal-- then the issue, save for the occasional Democratic cheap-shot, will wither and die.
But if DOBI decides otherwise, all hell will break loose.
Presumably, the state attorney general or the Election Law Enforcement Commission would then step in, using the advisory as the basis for seeking a legal remedy against Forrester. Democrats, no doubt, would immediately begin shouting for Forrester's immediate exit from the
race.
Forrester might try to fight it all. Maybe he'd challenge the constitutionality of an attempt to limit his self-financing, claiming his First Amendment rights trump any state law on political contributions by owners of insurance companies. And maybe he'd claim to be the victim of a vendetta if Peter Harvey, the attorney general, got involved, since Forrester has spent much of the campaign calling for Harvey's dismissal.
But it almost certainly wouldn't matter.
The headlines would be damning. All other issues would disappear, and the race for governor would devolve into an argument over how Forrester financed his campaign. It wouldn't be long-- days? hours?-- until Republican elders suggested their nominee do the honorable thing and excuse himself from the campaign.
At that point, it would be up to the Republican State Committee to select a new candidate, and it doesn't take more than a few phone calls to GOP movers and shakers to realize the candidate search process would begin and end in the office of U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie.
This speculation has led to even more bizarre behavior from the State GOP. In typical projecting fashion, the head Repug actually asked Dems to pledge that CORZINE won't be removed from the ticket in the wake of the Carla Katz affair:
Tom Wilson, the Republican state chairman, today became the first major political figure to broach the possibility of yet another last-minute ballot switch, calling on his Democratic counterpart, Bonnie Watson Coleman, to guarantee that her party will stick with Jon Corzine through the November election.
"In exchange for your pledge," the GOP chairman said, "I will offer my oath that, barring a life-threatening illness or accident, Doug Forrester will still be the Republican candidate for governor on November 8, 2005."
Which raises a fair question.
Is political radioactivity a life-threatening illness?
Things just keep getting stranger and stranger in a NJ race that was expected to be a pretty boring walk-over for Corzine. Forrester is expected to combat the financing charges by arguing Buckley v. Valeo and freedom of speech, but I think if the DOBI finds he's violating State campaign ethics rules, that will supercede the speech issue.