ELEC Head Sues Gov. Murphy, Top Aides Over Attempted Ouster

A complaint was filed Thursday in Mercer County Superior Court against Gov. Phil Murphy and three top staff members by executive director of the Election Law Enforcement Commission, Jeffrey Brindle, that alleged the defendants conspired to illegally force Brindle from his position as head of New Jersey’s campaign finance watchdog organization.

Commissioner Claims Conspiracy

In the complaint, Brindle seeks damages and injunctive relief “in connection with a conspiracy by Governor Philip Murphy, his Counsel, Parimal Garg, Chief of Staff George Helmy and Chief Ethics Officer Dominic Rota to force by illegal coercion and threats the resignation of plaintiff from his position as Executive Director of ELEC and to interfere with the independence of ELEC by pressuring and otherwise instructing its Commissioners to terminate Brindle from his position.”

Brindle is represented by civil rights and constitutional lawyer Bruce I. Afran, an adjunct Rutgers University School of Law professor. The suit alleged that Murphy and three of his top aides conspired to violate the New Jersey Civil Rights Act by attempting to force Brindle from his position at the helm of ELEC.

Afran produced a copy of a letter sent to Steven Morris in the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity on Jan. 9. The letter stated that it was written “in response to the request of the Attorney General that Mr. Brindle participate in” the attorney general’s “investigation of an alleged discriminatory act by Mr. Brindle and with pre-investigation ‘training’ in connection with such process.”

The letter went on to detail what Afran termed Murphy’s attempt “to force and coerce” the resignation of Brindle.

According to the letter, Brindle was told to report to a meeting at Murphy’s office where Garg, Helmy and Rota demanded that Brindle resign immediately as executive director of ELEC. The letter went on to state that, if Brindle refused, an alleged “anti-gay” remark he made in an email would be made public.

“Brindle understood this to be a threat that the alleged email would be disclosed publicly if he refused the demand to resign; the statement was, in fact, an attempt to extort by force or coercion Brindle’s resignation from his office of Executive Director of ELEC,” the complaint stated.

“When Mr. Brindle asked if there was a complaint he could see or if there was any writing documenting the allegation, he was told that the Governor’s staff was in possession of an email that would not be provided,” Afran’s letter said.

According to the complaint, the demand for Brindle to resign came one day after he published an article on the Inside NJ website titled “How Not to Enter Politics (A Satire).”

“The article reflected upon the use of private financing to propel political careers and, in particular, ‘dark money’ committees, a practice for which defendant Murphy has been separately criticized in the media,” the complaint said.

After Brindle refused to resign, the complaint stated, there was continued pressure on the “independent ELEC Commissioners” to force his resignation. According to the complaint, Rota called the ELEC chair and two other commissioners and stated he wanted Brindle fired.

“This is an unprecedented situation,” Afran said. “I’m not aware of any situation in which a sitting officer of state government has sued the governor for conspiracy to violate their civil rights. And what provoked this was unprecedented. I’ve never heard of a governor who, in an underhanded manner, and under the public radar, attempted to force the resignation of a neutral independent agency head. And I can tell you, Jeff Brindle is not resigning.”

Afran stated that Brindle has a civil right to continue in his appointed position.

The complaint also implicated a piece of legislation, the Elections Transparency Act (S2866/A4372), “as part of a pattern and scheme to force by different artifices the resignation or firing of Jeffrey Brindle.”

A request for comment from Gov. Murphy’s office was not immediately returned.

Election Legislation Stalls

The massive Elections Transparency Act was due to be presented on both the Senate and Assembly floors on Feb. 27, but was pulled at the last minute, according to Assemblyman Brian Bergen, R-Morris/Somerset.

In addition to now requiring the position of executive director of ELEC to be appointed by the governor and with the advice and consent of the Senate, the bill also introduced ”housekeeping accounts” to pay nonpolitical expenses for things such as legal fees, would lower the statute of limitations on campaign violations to two years, and would end local pay-to-play laws.

“You can call this ‘The Elections Transparency Act’ only in the sense that it is obvious what its purpose is—to eliminate Jeff Brindle, the executive director,” Afran said. “Jeff Brindle is the most respected, neutral, elections official in the state and after 25 years of sterling performance—and apparently because he criticizes dark money, which the governor uses—the governor’s office is angling to force him out of office.

“If this bill should pass, it is plainly unconstitutional,” Afran said. “This latest bill will be seen in the context of having no purpose except to force Brindle out of office. It is special legislation to force out a political opponent and to retaliate against the ELEC commissioners who criticized the first attempt to eliminate Jeff Brindle.

“A lawyer friend of mine said, ‘This is really taken from the Putin school of government,’” Afran said.

ELEC was established in 1973 and is tasked with monitoring campaign financing in all New Jersey elections. Organizations, including candidates and campaign organizations, must file contribution and expenditure reports with the commission. ELEC also administers the law that requires New Jersey gubernatorial and legislative candidates to make their personal finances public before election day.

The bill was sponsored in the Senate by its president, Sen. Nicholas P. Scutari, D-Middlesex, Somerset and Union. Scutari did not respond to requests for comment on the bill.

According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee minority statement issued Feb. 23, 2022, the bill is meant to fix issues that led the New Jersey district court to block a previous disclosure law. The minority statement, issued by Bergen and Assembly Minority Whip Antwan McClellan, R-Atlantic/Cape May/Cumberland, laid out three reasons to oppose the bill.

The two assemblymen took issue with the allowance of the housekeeping account, the lowering of the statute of limitations for alleged campaign violations, and the replacement of “pay-to-play” laws with what the Bergen and McClellan called “fair and open” loopholes. The dissenting statement said that there are even more issues with the legislation, but that the three issues highlighted are “more than enough to validate opposition to this bill.”

As to the bill’s new requirement, making the position of executive director of ELEC an appointment made by the governor, Bergen said, “Something does not smell right.”

At the Assembly Appropriations Committee meeting on Feb. 23, Bergen spoke out against the bill and stated that this bill guts pay-to-play and reverts the state back to the 1980s by removing the protections put in place to limit corruption in the state. Bergen called the return of the “housekeeping account” ridiculous and stated that those accounts were eliminated because they were used for political kickbacks.

“This is called the Elections Transparency Act,” Bergen said. “I think we should rename it the Public Corruption Authorization Act.”

Despite Bergen’s objections, the bill passed the Assembly Appropriations Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee in late February.

Bergen said that, by exposing certain aspects of this bill early, there was a tremendous amount of pressure on the “rank and file” members of the Democratic Party. “They just did not have the votes,” Bergen told the New Jersey Law Journal. “Speed can be their friend and things skate through with minimal transparency.”

Bergen said that this bill first raised a red flag for him when he became aware that the threshold for candidates and various committees to report campaign contributions was lowered from $300 to $200. The assemblyman expressed concern that, by lowering that threshold, New Jersey representatives would be opening up their friends and family to unwanted publication of their personal information on political donation lists.

“My rookie opinion is that this thing started rolling down the track and people could not live with this,” Bergen said. “They started throwing garbage into this bill until it became a hot mess. My guess is that they are going to roll back as many of those things as they need to until they have enough people to support it and stop there.”