Moriarty calls for direct election of Attorney General, State Treasurer and State Auditor

New Jersey has the most constitutionally potent Governor in the nation, but a veteran legislator wants to transfer some of that power back to the voters by directly electing some key statewide positions.

“The state offices of the Attorney General, Auditor, and Treasurer should be directly elected and held accountable by the people,” said Assemblyman Paul Moriarty (D-Washington Township), the Democratic nominee for State Senate in the 4th district.

Moriarty’s proposal one-ups a proposal by his Republican opponent, Christopher Del Borrello, to elect the state comptroller directly.

Del Borrello and his Assembly running mates, Matt Walker and Amanda Esposito, have smacked Democratic senators from Camden County for using senatorial courtesy to block Gov. Phil Murphy’s three-year-old nomination of Kevin Walsh as the state comptroller.  The GOP claims Democrats want to protect Democratic powerhouse George Norcross from being investigated by the comptroller’s office.

“Like a broken clock, Chris Del Borrello is right once a day but still misses the broader point,” Moriarty said.”  This isn’t about insider politics.  It’s about the 9 million people who live in New Jersey having a say in every high-ranking cabinet-level office in our state government because they are agenda-setters and steer massive public policy.”

Moriarty believes an elected State Treasurer and State Auditor, along with an elected Attorney General, would make the government more accountable to voters.

“If Chris were really interested in saving the taxpayer’s money, he would call for the position of State Comptroller to be eliminated — as 31 states have already deemed the position repetitive and obsolete,” he said.  “As the chief custodian of the state’s finances and setting revenue projections for government, the Treasurer should be independent and accountable to the people.”

New Jersey is one of three states, along with Alaska and Hawaii, where voters directly elect only a Governor and Lieutenant Governor; voters pick only the Governor in Maine, New Hampshire, and Tennessee. The other 44 states elect at least one additional statewide officeholder, with some electing more than ten.

The delegates made that decision at the 1947 New Jersey Constitutional Convention.  The Lt. Governor post is just fourteen years old.

The issue of more elected statewide officials has yet to necessarily resonate with voters in the past.  In 2017, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno called for the direct election of the Attorney General, but she lost by fourteen percentage points.

“Electing a State Comptroller would help shift the balance of power away from political bosses like George Norcross,” Walker said.  “I would look forward to working with an elected State Comptroller to hold people accountable, save tax dollars, and expose corruption – wherever it might be found.”

But Moriarty believes “the people of New Jersey should have much more authority over what they get from the State government.”

“By moving to direct elections, we would increase accountability, and New Jersey would no longer be one of four states that do not elect the critically important positions of Attorney General, Treasurer, and Auditor,” Moriarty said.