Political race could become money chase

What is the cost of winning a seat on the Marlboro Township Council? For the three Repub-licans who won terms on the governing body in the November 2005 election, the bottom line was about $92,000 in campaign expenses.

The Democrats, who were unsuccessful in their bids for public office, spent $49,000 on the campaign.

The numbers, as reported in a story in today’s News Tran-script, give residents an insight to just what it takes to mount a campaign and see it through to victory.

One element that was introduced to Marlboro politics in 2005 — just as it was in the race for New Jersey governor — was the emergence of an individual who was willing to put his own money on the line to seek a term of office.

While Doug Forrester and Jon Corzine spent millions of dollars of their own fortunes to run their campaigns for governor, Marlboro Republican council candidate Steve Rosenthal gave his ticket a significant boost that the Democrats did not enjoy when he made a contribution of $49,000 to help with campaign expenses.

Rosenthal’s contribution helped the Republicans outspend the Democrats by about a 2-to-1 margin. The money helped to pay for professional polling services, for direct mail pieces to residents, and for a newspaper-style campaign piece that hit the Democrats hard.

Rosenthal said he made the financial commitment in part so that the GOP campaign would not have to take money from developers or other individuals who might want something, i.e., a public contract or approval of a project in return.

In a town like Marlboro that has been rocked by political scandal in the past year, that is a commendable position to take. We do not have a problem with Rosenthal using any resources at his disposal to run for political office.

However, it certainly does open up to debate the question of whether people who run for local office in the future may have to have some of the same financial backing or wealth that candidates who run for state and national office require.

We hope that will not be the case, because running for local office is something the average resident should be able to do without having to commit an exorbitant amount of his or her own money.

By themselves, each party in Marlboro raised about the same amount of money for the 2005 election (Democrats, $50,275; Republicans, $42,363), and without Rosenthal’s money that could have made for a different outcome.

If nothing else, this campaign opens up an interesting debate. Do residents want local politics to become the province of rich individuals who can finance their own campaign, or is it time to seriously discuss campaign-spending limits and other measures that might make running for local office possible for all citizens?