JACKSON TOWNSHIP, NJ – The Jackson Township election campaign season has begun, and today the candidates aligned with incumbent Republican Mayor Michael Reina have announced they will not accept any financial donations from pay-to-play firms looking for public work.
Jackson is known as a pay-to-play town where professional engineers, lawyers, and architects often donate large sums of money to political candidates with a handshake agreement that they will be appointed to lucrative public service contracts.
Candidates often max out their legal donations of $2,600 per individual in return for large annual public appointments. Some of those professionals earn millions of dollars annually throughout Ocean County.
For years, residents have called upon the township council to enact pay-to-play caps and limits that bar campaign donors from getting high-paying township appointments. Those calls have fallen upon deaf ears. One such proposal would have barred any professional firms who donate in excess of $300 per candidate from securing public contracts for one year after the election.
Today, Mayor Michael Reina and his slate, including school board member Scott Sargent and successful entrepreneur Jennifer Kuhn, pledged to refuse those campaign donations from professional firms.
“The Moving Jackson Forward team has made the decision not to accept donations from any professionals that are or could be associated with Jackson Township,” Reina said today. “We all agree that pay-to-play has no place in this campaign; the stakes are too high for there to be even the appearance of any outside influences. As such, we will be relying on even the smallest donations from you, our friends, family, and supporters.”
Reina’s team has secured the endorsement of the membership majority of the Jackson Republican Club, which overruled Glory and her associates in a floor vote last month.
Their opponents, Marty Flemming for Mayor, Andrew Kern, and Samara Porter, have already begun taking checks from township professionals through a PAC operated by campaign treasurer Clara Glory.
Under Glory’s Jackson Leadership Fund, the campaign has raised $42,000 from pay-to-play professionals and will soon be hosting a $300 wine and dine mixer at the Pine Barrens Golf Club, where candidates will meet with professionals, lawyers, engineers, and others seeking public contracts in Jackson.
A private invitation was recently mailed to dozens of high-profile pay-to-play firm executives, inviting them to a “Cigar and Scotch” event on October 6th. The invitation was not published on the campaign’s public Facebook page, and the invitation was not made to non-professional supporters of the ticket in an apparent attempt to keep the general public away from the ‘how the sausage is made’ upscale event.
The invitation for the $300 cocktail and cigar event comes as many Jackson residents are struggling to pay their weekly grocery bills, fuel bills, and energy bills amid a looming recession and skyrocketing inflation nationwide.
Instead, the team is offering a less expensive karaoke night for $100 per head at the Whitesville firehouse to the rest of their supporters.
Reina said the offering was out of touch with the financial reality Jackson residents face every day.
“We have professionals in town that do a great job,” Reina said. “They’re here because they do a good job, not because they’re going to give us checks. I said this year; we’re not taking their checks. Pay to play in Jackson needs to come to an end. We’re not going to sit around and smoke cigars and drink Scotch with lawyers and professionals while so many in our town are struggling to survive week to week under Bidenflation, soaring energy prices and out-of-control food costs. That’s not us.”
Instead, Reina said his team is going to rely on small donations from supporters and grassroots political campaigning.
We reached out to Glory for a comment on this and have not received a reply.