Devanney’s Campaign, PR Spending, and Public Wellness Initiatives

Apr 5, 2025

Mayor Angie Devanney has already raised over $6,000 for a potential re-election bid— despite that election being more than a year away.

A substantial portion of her contributions so far comes from Senator Vin Gopal, who raised more than $1.6 million in 2023 for his re-election campaign in Legislative District 11, a Central Jersey district with some overlap into the southern region of the state.

Devanney reported no expenditures in the NJ ELEC database during her initial mayoral campaign in 2018, despite raising nearly $21,000. In contrast, her 2022 campaign saw fundraising exceed $29,000, with expenditures totaling more than $40,000—an unusually high amount for a local race in a town of just 13,000 residents.

Additional spending reported in her 2026 campaign account appears related to the 2022 race, potentially bringing the total spent on that campaign to over $46,000.

As of early April, no current ELEC filings appear available for Council members Susan Poage and Manuel Couto, both of whom are up for re-election this year.

Some residents have raised questions about the overlap between campaign visibility and municipal programs, including the Mayor’s Wellness Campaign. One recent event, featuring Councilwoman Poage, focused on Howard Gardner’s “Multiple Intelligences” theory—an educational framework that gained traction in the 1980s but has since declined in academic credibility.

While the theory is still used in some educational contexts, it has not been adopted into mainstream wellness frameworks grounded in mental health, public health, or evidence-based fitness initiatives. It is also rarely cited in peer-reviewed wellness literature.

Additionally, records obtained by NJ21st through an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request show that the $30,000 public relations firm hired by the Township this year played a significant role in promoting the Mayor’s Wellness Campaign during the first two months of 2025. Based on the responsive documents, the majority of the firm’s communications and deliverables focused on this initiative.