New Jersey's political parties are seeing a huge uptick in campaign contributions from public contractors that do business with the government to the tune of millions.

On new investigation from NJ Advance Media finds the shift is a direct result of the state gutting pay to play laws through the new Election Transparency Act, which also dramatically increased how much donors can give to candidates and political parties, essentially opening the floodgates on what was once a good government measure meant to prevent contractors from buying their business.

Riley Yates is the lead data reporter at NJ Scum and uncovered the numbers.

He joins me now.

Riley, it's good to talk to you.

I guess first question off the bat is why are we seeing these pay to play laws relaxed?

What's changed?

Well, it's it's it's a lot.

I mean, I think part of it is just the reality that folks in power recognize that we've had a lot of change in the political landscape.

And this is a way to pump more money into the system.

But I think it's also relates to the fact that it's a lot harder to regulate campaign finance anymore.

There's been a lot of Supreme Court rulings that have sort of challenged the ability to keep money out of politics.

And so the argument you hear from supporters of changing this law is, is that, well, if you can't keep money out of politics, you might as well make it transparent.

And if you pour money into the political parties, even if it's coming from contractors, at least the public knows that and they can vote accordingly.

So their their argument then is this is happening anyway.

At least we can shed some light on who it is and how much it is and where it's going.

Exactly.

And so, of course, yeah, I'm curious then which political parties then from your research, received the most from these contractors?

Well, New Jersey is a Democratic state, and as you can imagine, the only way that you can have a contract is if you're doing business with the government in power.

And so because New Jersey, most governments are controlled by Democrats, most of the money is flowing to the Democratic Party.

Middlesex County seems to have the most robust machine there.

And in the last year, from what I found, they raised almost $700,000 from contractors that do business with the government, and that was more than half of the money they raised.

Which remind us how much previously before these rules were changed.

Were these contractors companies able to contribute to a political party.

In some cases, only $300.

Although significant difference?

Yeah, there were certainly there were a lot of loopholes and workarounds that they'd found ways to get around.

But the rules, if you sort of live by the by the book, it was 300 bucks and I found contributions of as much as $65,000 in this last year.

Wow.

To a single party.

So I guess, what's the main conflict here?

Is it that we risk companies essentially paying for these municipalities to keep their businesses in business?

I mean, are they saying, here's the money, keep us in work?

Yeah, well, it's so it's difficult to talk about quid pro quo because, you know, that's obviously a legal thing.

Right.

But you certainly can say that the reason that these pay to play laws were passed was based on the perception that it was corrupting to have people who are doing business with the government then turn around and fund the campaigns.

And that that probably led to a lot of mischief that maybe wasn't in the public interest.

So once you started looking through this, what stood out to you the most was just the sheer amount now being donated in comparison to previous years.

Was it where it's going?

What really stood out?

Well, like to give an example, I my story focused on a really small local race that nobody paid attention to at the time in Gloucester County.

And in that case, you had it was a really, really close race.

It was decided by 48 votes.

And in that case, you had the Democrats who were in power were able to raise nearly all of their money from contractors that they raised 21,000 out of the $26,000 they raised came from, you know, their engineers, their lawyers, their their insurance brokers and all that.

And, you know, whether that sways the race or not, who knows?

Right.

But it certainly shows that it certainly is something that, you know, is happening and that probably very few people are aware of.

All right.

Riley Yates is the lead data reporter for NJ Advance Media for NJ.com.

Riley, great reporting.

Thanks for sharing it with us.

Thank you so much for having me.