New Jersey legislative elections could be a proxy fight attracting out-of-state money

New Jersey politics, known for its partisan knife fights and big spenders, could become the playing field for even bigger, badder combatants from out of state.

And it could happen in relatively local races that usually don't get much attention.

Gov. Christie, New Jersey's lightning rod, has attracted the interest of rich political action committees as well as shadow groups that don't have to disclose their unrestricted donations from corporations, unions, and other special interests. Some aim to help Christie, others to hobble him.

In this off-year for federal and gubernatorial races, only four states will have legislative elections, and the Garden State is considered the most competitive.

Control of New Jersey's legislative houses, now in Democratic hands, hangs in the balance because all 120 seats are up, in districts that are being redrawn. The outcome could affect control of the Legislature for years, and if Republicans win, some believe the state could become a presidential battleground for the first time in decades.

New Jersey will be "much more important nationally" in 2011, said Michael Muller, chief strategic adviser to the Democrats' legislative effort, who anticipates "national money" coming in to support candidates.

New Jersey, Virginia, Louisiana, and Mississippi are "the only four games in town," said David Avella, president of GOPAC, a grassroots Republican organization that has "robust plans" to invest in Garden State races.

With battles over workers' rights raging in the Midwest and Christie eager to recalibrate benefits for public employees in New Jersey, labor organizations are likely to play bigger roles than they have.

The New Jersey AFL-CIO is organizing an issues group that intends to go beyond labor's traditional reach by contacting middle-class voters whether they're members or not, said Charles Wowkanech, president of the state's federation of unions.

"Given the economy and the whole dynamics of the political situation in New Jersey, it's imperative. . . . We have to reach outside the labor movement," Wowkanech said.

Carolyn Fiddler, spokeswoman for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee in Washington, said: "If Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and various other states have demonstrated anything over the past few months, it's that state legislative elections are incredibly important. I think a lot of previously uninvolved groups may understand that now in a way they didn't before."

The national Republican State Leadership Committee also has increased its activity in New Jersey. A sister organization, the State Government Leadership Foundation, contributed $25,000 to Reform Jersey Now, a shadow group associated with Christie that disbanded last year after voluntarily disclosing its donors. Like Reform Jersey Now, the foundation can take unlimited contributions from donors it is not required to identify because it is organized as an "issues advocacy group" under the tax code.

These groups tend to play rough. They're already punching it out in Wisconsin, where 16 state legislators - eight Democrats and eight Republicans - may be up for recall in a few weeks. The resulting elections could shift power in Wisconsin's Republican-controlled legislature.

Last year, national groups rumbled across the country, pouring millions of dollars into statehouse races. A failed Democratic state Senate candidate in Maine has filed a libel suit against the Republican State Leadership Committee, saying it ran television, radio, and print ads in the fall falsely implying that he inappropriately spent his town's Fourth of July fireworks budget on a political campaign when he was a selectman.

Former State Rep. Jim Schatz had planned to spend $23,000 on the race. But in the final 10 days, the Republican State Leadership Committee dropped $70,000 in advertising in his district and $400,000 overall in the state. Control of the legislature was at stake, and the Republicans won.

"It totally overwhelmed the process," said Schatz's attorney, Barry Mills.

Republican State Leadership Committee spokesman Adam Temple said the group had historic wins in last year's legislative races, funding efforts even where Democrats held big majorities, such as New Jersey.

In 2010, it invested $1 million in Pennsylvania and helped the party gain control of the General Assembly, furthering the mission of Republican Gov. Corbett.

Until recently, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee was absent from Wisconsin. Early in the last decade it was implicated in an investigation that led Senate Democratic leader Chuck Chvala to plead guilty to two of 19 campaign finance-law violation charges, said Mike McCabe, of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Project, which investigates campaign finances. Prosecutors found no wrongdoing by the Democratic group.

McCabe estimated that in Wisconsin's 2010 legislative and gubernatorial elections, half of the almost $38 million in campaign spending had come from outside groups funded by corporations, unions, and others dedicated to special interests such as school choice. That was a lot of cheese for a state where campaign spending has totaled about $23 million in 2004.

Two homegrown independent groups already have operated in New Jersey on the legislative front.

Last year, now-defunct Reform Jersey Now mailed brochures and made robo-calls into some districts to persuade Democrats to get on board with Christie's call for a constitutional amendment to cap municipal spending.

And the Center for a Better New Jersey, organized by Senate Minority Leader Thomas H. Kean Jr. (R., Union) and Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce (R., Morris), is raising money and helping Republicans as they redraw legislative districts.

Such organizations have proliferated since a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year allowing corporations and unions to make unlimited donations to issues-advocacy groups. A proposed federal law that would have required disclosure of donors' names failed last year, and only a handful of states have pursued similar legislation. A bill to force disclosure in New Jersey languishes in an Assembly committee.

"At the federal level, we fully expect that outside groups are going to engage in politics . . . well beyond what they did in 2010," said Dave Levinthal of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. "A lot of special-interest groups, corporations, unions even now are trying to figure out how" to participate."

Some, like Mills, who represented the defeated Maine Democrat, fear that once these groups take hold, political parties will become irrelevant.

"These people operate totally independent of any political party," Mills said.

And "after they win the elections for you," he said, "then you have to abide by their instructions. Otherwise, they'll come and get you. . . . This is only a prelude to what we're going to see in the next few years."