Big Donors Had Access To Mikie Sherrill At Inaugural Ball. But The Public Won't Have Access To The Donor List

EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey — At an Italian restaurant at American Dream mall, where Champagne bottles go for $600, Mikie Sherrill moved table to table to speak with business executives, lobbyists and union leaders.

The price to attend the ritzy dinner?

$100,000 — at minimum.

The big-dollar donations to dine with the then-incoming governor of New Jersey went toward her inaugural festivities held at the same complex where the New York Jets and Giants play. And the six-figure donations came despite a $500 limit in state law on inaugural contributions that couldn’t even cover the most expensive Champagne at Carpaccio, where Sherrill glad-handed with guests five days before her swearing-in. The dinner was recounted by two people familiar with the event.

But through a loophole, donors were asked to give over $250,000 — and a comprehensive list of their identities and donations may never be public.

Sherrill promoted a platform of “transparency and accountability” in her campaign for governor, and in an interview once said she wanted to “get dark money out of politics.”

But her inaugural ball has taken advantage of a loophole long used by close allies of incoming New Jersey governors — one that’s far from transparent.

Unlike the official inaugural committee, Mission to Deliver, a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization, is not subject to any limit on how much donors can contribute to it, nor does it have to publicly disclose its fundraising. But what’s clear from fundraising missives reviewed by POLITICO is that Mission to Deliver was soliciting huge checks from donors.

"As a 501(c)4, you’re talking about donations that are unlimited and dark, so nobody’s even aware of who’s potentially buying influence from the new administration,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform for the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center. “The typical New Jerseyan doesn’t know even who’s part of that select group that has helped fund the inaugural ball, but they’re going to see the potential outcomes of that when a policy favored by special interests gets more support from the governor.”

A spokesperson for Sherrill declined to comment on whether the governor would ask Mission to Deliver to disclose its donors.

Mission to Deliver’s leader, hospital executive Jose Lozano, said the group was set up to pay for the inaugural ball and that it plans to host events around the nation’s 250th anniversary of independence and possibly the World Cup matches coming to New Jersey this summer, which include the final. It does not intend to promote Sherrill’s legislative or political agenda, he said.

“There is zero intention to do anything political at all,” Lozano said, adding that the group did not share donor information with Sherrill, who it “invited” to the ball celebrating her inauguration.

According to a donation solicitation, donors were asked to give or bundle anywhere from $5,000 to more than $250,000. The biggest donors were the “Commander” tier – those who gave over $250,000. They got perks that included four tickets to the pre-inaugural dinner attended by the then governor-elect and a membership on its finance committee, “including quarterly briefings from top officials.” Those who gave $5,000 got two tickets to Sherrill’s swearing-in ceremony and ball.

Those donations paid in full for Sherrill’s inaugural ball, where hours after taking office the new governor joined the rap group Naughty by Nature on stage to perform their 1991 hit O.P.P.

Lozano said Naughty by Nature, who hail from East Orange, performed without charge other than having their expenses covered. “They were excited to hear that the governor is such a fan,” he said.

Lozano did not say how much was raised in total from Mission to Deliver.

Some of the donors were partially disclosed, but only to those who attended the ball. LED screens at the ball cycled through “thank you” messages to some of the largest donors, which listed some of Trenton’s largest lobbying firms, labor unions and private companies. Some of those messages showed up on screens behind dancers dressed in jumpsuits resembling Navy helicopter pilot uniforms, an homage to Sherrill’s military service.

Among the major donors listed was the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group whose leader, Ed Potosnak, was announced as Sherrill’s pick for commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection just days earlier. Lozano said the donation had “zero connection” to Potosnak’s role in the administration.

The group also gave around $1.7 million to boost Sherrill’s gubernatorial campaign. In a statement to POLITICO, the group declined to comment on the exact amount they donated to the inauguration.

“New Jersey LCV has a long history of investing in environmental champions up and down the ballot because we know that fighting climate change and lowering costs requires leadership at the state and local levels,” spokesperson Anthony Campisi said in a statement. “We were proud to be among the first organizations to endorse Governor Sherrill’s campaign because we believe in her vision of building a cleaner, more affordable New Jersey.

Other major donors listed at the event included Amazon, insurer Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, Audible, the lobbying firms MBI Gluckshaw, Princeton Public Affairs, River Crossing Strategy Group, The Sports Betting Alliance, FBT Gibbons law firm, the NJEA, the Laborers’ union, Bristol Myers Squibb, SILVI Materials and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers. Lozano said he believes all of the biggest donors were mentioned on the screens, though not those who gave smaller amounts.

The arrangement is on firm legal footing. Just before former Gov. Phil Murphy’s first inauguration in 2018, an attorney for a 501(c)4 group called Celebrate New Jersey Now requested an advisory opinion from the Election Law Enforcement Commission on whether it could solicit donations of more than $500 to aid in funding Murphy’s inaugural, whether it would have to report them and if it could coordinate with members of the official inaugural committee.

ELEC responded that it could, citing another advisory opinion the agency issued for the 1982 inauguration of former Gov. Tom Kean. At the time, the agency held that “the danger of improper influence on a successful candidate is minimal where the contributions, in this case the revenues generated from purchasing tickets, will not be applied for any purpose related to his candidacy, or any other political purpose” and that limiting donations to the groups would “unnecessarily limit the fund raising capacity of worthy charitable and social causes.”

But there’s a key difference between groups like Mission to Deliver and those in the 1982 inauguration: The latter were bona fide charities that were not set up with the sole intent of funding inaugural festivities. They were the New Jersey Historical Society, Friends of Newark Museum and New Jersey Arts Council, and the funds they raised went towards furnishings for the governor’s mansion in Princeton, museums, and expenses related to the Arts Council.

Many states allow similar non-profits to fund events related to gubernatorial inaugurations.

“I don’t see it as a Governor Sherrill issue,” said attorney C.J. Griffin, a New Jersey government transparency advocate. “It seems to be standard at both the state and federal level, where you have these organizations form to really fund these inaugural activities that seem to be substantial and costly, but then there’s no transparency around it.”

Griffin said it calls for “systemic-type changes” to increase transparency.

The public will eventually be able to see who gave donations of up to $500 to fund Sherrill’s inaugural ceremony. But Lozano says that since Mission to Deliver will not be pursuing a political agenda, he does not feel the need to go above and beyond what the IRS requires for disclosure by non-profits, which includes how much total money they raise and spend but does not require them to specifically list donors and most expenditures.

“We made commitments to our donors, those supporting us, that no donations would be going to anything political,” he said.