Capital Games

Adler tops $1 million; Pallone nearly 4x that

Freshman Rep. John Adler, a Democrat from Cherry Hill who captured what had been a Republican-held seat last year and is on the GOP's early hit list for 2010, has socked away more than $1 million for re-election already, new Federal Election Commission reports show.

But that's only one-quarter the bankroll amassed by Rep. Frank Pallone, D-Long Branch, whose more than $4 million gives him the biggest campaign cash balance in the entire House, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Pallone is chairman of the House health subcommittee and helped write one of the health care reform bills pending in the House. One report he filed this week shows that lobbyists for community pharmacists alone helped him raise more than $21,000, but his report for the July-September quarter is also full of donations from political action committees involved with health care.

Here's a full rundown of the delegation [Senators don't file electronically, so their data isn't as easy to grab]:

Congressman	Net receipts 7/1/09 thru 9/30/09	Cash on hand 9/30/09
ADLER	$404,406	$1,193,061
ANDREWS	$124,942	$195,211
HOLT	$142,351	$590,708
PALLONE	$355,662	$4,012,918
PASCRELL	$125,592	$1,373,321
PAYNE	$40,056	$1,154,070
ROTHMAN	$25,212	$1,759,842
SIRES	$65,339	$234,247
DEMOCRATS	$1,283,559	$10,513,378
FRELINGHUYSEN	$70,498	$494,810
GARRETT	$131,472	$267,587
LANCE	$107,661	$314,775
LOBIONDO	$101,562	$1,162,467
SMITH	$56,330	$120,481
REPUBLICANS	$467,524	$2,360,120

Beauty school stimulus

Today's paper carries the first part of an occasional series looking at where stimulus money is going in New Jersey. It looks at how Congress increased funding for Pell Grants, and how some of that money is going to a variety of trade schools including beauty academies and a cartooning college.

Keep reading for a full list of all the places where stimulus-funding Pell Grants have gone in New Jersey. This data is from a download I made Aug. 18 from usaspending.gov, so figures are likely to change as more money from the program is paid out.

Obama budget cuts panned by delegation

My story looking at some of the budget cuts President Obama recommended and how members of Congress reacted when questioned about them is being posted on northjersey.com.

For details on the proposed cuts, and excerpts from interviews with several members of Congress representing North Jersey, click below.

Your comments and questions are also welcome.

How to spend $1 million

Sunday's paper carries my package of stories about the recently concluded campaign in which Reps. Bill Pascrell and Steve Rothman each spent more than $1.2 million against opponents who spent no more than $50,000.

If you're interested in more details, you can view these tables I made:

• How Rothman spent $1.3 million : Table of all the expenditures from Rothman's chief campaign committee from the start of 2007 through election day in November 2008. His biggest outlays were to other political committees, but he also funded travel for himself and his staff, parties for Democrats and bought a new SUV.

• How Pascrell spent $1.2 million: Table of all the expenditures from Pascrell's chief campaign committee from the start of 2007 through election day in November 2008.

Tallies for how much all New Jersey candidates in 2008 raised and spent on the election are available here. Note, this list includes candidates who did not campaign in 2008 but had federal campaign accounts from previous years or for future campaigns.

Jersey's the word

Most common words in 2008

A ranking of the most common words and how often they were said by a Congress member from New Jersey in the Congressional Record over the past year. 1 jersey 727 2 oil 610 3 health 588 4 country 550 5 energy 478 6 help 448 7 million 439 8 public 412 9 families 409 10 americans 379 11 home 365 12 day 355 13 care 340 13 world 340 15 percent 334 16 community 315 16 funding 315 18 service 314 19 billion 312 19 tax 312 21 children 308 22 rights 305

You can argue about whether Congress ever gets anything done, but everyone can agree that even when they're not doing anything, they are talking about about getting things done.

And in 2008, no one in the New Jersey delegation even came close to matching Sen. Bob Menendez in the number of words spoken on the floor of Congress or added afterward to the official Congressional Record.

That's according to the web site capitolwords.org, a project of the Sunlight Foundation that scours the Congressional Record and counts how many words each member said and which ones appear most often. The site does not include procedural words or those with little significance to indexing, such as "about" or "program."

In their own way, these scorecards tell a lot of about the work Congress is doing, and who is doing it.

Menendez led the New Jersey pack over the past year with 4,525 words in his tally, more than double the 1,775 from fellow Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg.

Rep. Rush Holt, D-Hopewell Township, was the most loquacious House member with 2,630 words, followed by Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage, at 2,109.

It's important to note that House members usually are limited to a few minutes speaking time during debates that are tightly controlled by rules. Senators, by contrast, can often show up in an empty chamber and speak to the C-Span cameras for a half hour or more.

Offshore drilling

Today's Record carries my story looking at the offshore drilling debate from a slightly different angle: the supplies of natural gas discovered off the coast of New Jersey three decades ago. Here's some extra material if anyone is interested.

Rate of return

Today's paper carries a pair of stories I wrote about a perennial issue in New Jersey politics, the amount of federal spending that returns to New Jersey from each $1 in federal taxes paid.

• The main story looks at the trend and why various people say it's happening.
• A sidebar focuses on the competing views of Sen. Frank Lautenberg and opponent Dick Zimmer about how to fix the situation.

If you're really interested, here's some additional sources of information.

Menendez on travel and regulating

Today's paper carries my story on a bill Sen. Bob Menendez introduced Wednesday to prohibit federal regulators from taking industry-funded trips and his explanation of why that's bad and trips he took as a Congressman were not.

The bill resulted from a story in the Washington Post last week that found the acting chairwoman, Nancy Nord, and her predecessor took about 30 trips since 2002, and industires picked up about $60,000 worth of costs. A follow-up story found that some trips got ethics clearance from officials who took the trip.

Excerpts of my interview with Menendez yesterday appear below. In it, I ask him about a couple trips he took while serving in the House, including:

• A January 2001 trip to Hawaii funded by the American Association of Airport Executives.
• A January 2002 trip to Florida funded by the Association of American Railroads
• A February 2002 trip to Florida funded by the American Bankers Associaton
• An April 2003 trip to California funded by the Association of American Railroads

[these documents are provided through the Center for Public Integrity's Power Trips project]

FEC reports for third quarter

Tomorow's paper will have a lot of these numbers, but here's a look at the New Jersey house delegation and how much they raised from July to September, plus how much cash they had at the end of the quarter.

The message here: Frank Pallone continues to be a money machine.

Name	Contribs	Cash 9/30
	7/1-9/30
Andrews, D-Haddon Heights	$308,213	$2,429,899
LoBiondo, R-Millville	$141,895	$1,515,698
Saxton, R-Mount Holly	$97,085	$1,393,210
Smith, R-Robbinsville	$13,465	$204,162
Garrett, R-Wantage	$103,538	$332,117
Pallone, D-Long Branch	$328,013	$3,105,223
Ferguson, R-Warren Tsp	$238,362	$758,292
Pascrell, D-Paterson	$106,815	$1,031,440
Rothman, D-Fair Lawn	$60,350	$1,838,631
Payne, D-Newark	$33,650	$751,399
Frelinghuysen, R-Harding	$72,980	$594,158
Holt, D-Hopewell Tsp	$99,881	$623,200
Sires, D-West New York	$156,194	$132,605
All representatives	$1,760,440	$14,710,033
Democrats	$1,093,115	$9,912,397
Republicans	$667,325	$4,797,637

More charts on the jump.

Public-sector lobbying

This week's papers carry a three-part of a series I did with former colleague Dave Michaels on the amount of money the public sector in New Jersey -- towns, counties, universities and even the state itself -- spends on lobbying in Washington.

The first part of the series, with a link to the sidebar, is here. It's an overview describing how $4 million of the taxes, tolls and tuition paid in New Jersey went to Washington lobbyists, and asks the question of whether that spending is worth it.
The second part of the series, in which Michaels looked at the amount NJ Transit paid for lobbyists to build support for a new Hudson River tunnel, is here.
The final installment of the series, focusing on spending by public colleges and universities, is here.

If you want even more details:

• This chart shows how much each public entity spent on Washington lobbying in the past five years.
• This chart shows how much the different lobbyists and lobbying firms in Washington were paid by various towns, counties, authorities and universities.
• This chart provides links to the actual reports filed by the lobbyists, showing the issues on which they lobbied Congress or the government.

The Center for Responsive Politics has a searchable database on lobbying reports, which is developed from reports filed with the Senate Office of Public Records.