Campaign Cash for Cameras and Gates: New Jersey Lets Politicians Pay for Their Own Security

By Thaddeus Quarrington, Statehouse Correspondent

New Jersey politicians may now spend campaign money on their own safety. On Tuesday, Oct. 27, Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed S-3386/A-5258, which allows candidates, officeholders and some other fundraising committees to use political contributions for security needed because of a campaign, including cameras, gates and personnel.

The bill passed the state Senate unanimously and the Assembly by a vote of 51 to 12, according to New Jersey Monitor’s Nikita Biryukov. It was introduced in February, months after two killings that changed how many politicians think about their safety: the June 2025 murders of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the September 2025 killing of activist Charlie Kirk.

What the law allows, and what it doesn’t

The sponsors, Sens. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen) and Carmen Amato (R-Ocean) and Assemblyman Rob Karabinchak (D-Middlesex) wrote limits into the bill. Campaign money cannot be spent on firearms or ammunition, and it cannot be paid to family members for security work. Equipment bought with campaign funds stays campaign property. When the account closes, it must be sold, either at cost or at fair market value.

Earlier versions described in a September report by Dana DiFilippo listed fencing, lighting, motion detectors and cybersecurity among the covered expenses. The details will now be set by the Election Law Enforcement Commission, which must write the regulations.

The idea is not new. New Jersey Monitor reported in August 2025 that the state was moving to regulate security spending by campaigns as political violence increased. The new law puts the practice into statute in New Jersey, with explicit limits.

The objections, mostly from the right

The 12 no votes came with arguments worth hearing, and most of them came from Republicans. Assemblyman John Azzariti, a Bergen County Republican, argued that if officials need protection, the government should pay for it. “The money should certainly not be coming from donors,” he said in September.

Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia, a Republican from Sussex County, made the point more personally: “I don’t believe anybody ever donated to me with the intention of: ‘I hope this keeps her alive.’”

Assemblyman Jay Webber, a Morris County Republican, pointed to the state’s history of public corruption. “I mean, this is New Jersey,” he said. “You should be expecting bad headlines about candidates who misuse these funds, whether it’s getting chauffeurs, or shall we call them Uber drivers, for their kids to school or installing fences around their homes that they always wanted to put in.” Webber and Fantasia also called it “hypocrisy” for supporters of the bill to drive cars with the special license plates that identify state lawmakers.

The structural criticism is harder to dismiss. Campaign money is not spread evenly. Incumbents, and members of the majority party in particular, usually have much more of it than challengers. A law that lets campaign funds pay for security means that the officials with the most money will have the best protection. A first-time challenger getting threats on a small budget will get much less help from this law than a long-serving incumbent with a large war chest.

The case for it

The case for the law is that the alternatives are worse. Taxpayer-funded security for every legislator would be expensive and hard to justify politically. Letting officials pay out of pocket would favor the wealthy even more than campaign funding does. Doing nothing means accepting that people who hold or seek office face threats that would be considered unacceptable in most other jobs.

Seen that way, the bill is a practical compromise. It uses money that donors gave to support a candidate’s political career, and spends some of it on keeping that candidate safe. The ban on guns and on paying relatives, and the rule that equipment must be sold when the account closes, target the most obvious ways the money could be misused.

The final vote reflected that. The Senate was unanimous, and the bill had sponsors from both parties.

What to watch

ELEC’s regulations will determine how this works in practice. The commission will need to say what counts as “security” and what is simply home improvement, how campaigns must report and document the spending, and how equipment is valued when an account is closed. Webber’s warning about overly broad language will either be addressed in the rules or show up in future enforcement cases.

Sherrill signed other bills the same day, including the New Jersey History Day Act and a Green Acres funding measure. Neither will matter as much to the people who serve in Trenton as this one.

Featured image: Mikie Sherrill in her official portrait as a member of the U.S. House, 2019. Photo by U.S. House Office of Photography/House Creative Services via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.