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Advocates See New Hope For Publicly Financed Campaigns In NY

Jim Levulis
/
WAMC

More than 200 groups are pushing for New York to enact a public campaign finance system for statewide candidates. And they say they’ve never been closer to achieving their goal.

The coalition, known as Fair Elections for New York, includes dozens of unions, the Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, and the Sierra Club. Rosemary Rivera, with the government reform group Citizen Action, says in New York’s current system, big money donors have had nearly an unlimited ability to contribute to candidates. She says that means the politicians who receive the money often push proposals that the big donors are interested in, at the expense of other New Yorkers.  

“People in our communities are suffering,” said Rivera. “On housing, on criminal justice issues, on education, on health care.”

Rivera says the real estate industry has been a major contributor to state legislative campaigns, and she believes, as a result, policy decisions have been made that adversely affect tenants. They include a measure passed several years ago that weakens New York City’s rent laws.

“Predominately black and brown tenants wind up being evicted,” Rivera said.

She says if everyone were on an equal footing, and only small donations were permitted, then elected officials might listen more to the needs of middle and working-class residents.

Jessica Wisneski, also with Citizen Action, says the public financing of campaigns is not a new concept.  New York City and other nearby states have had systems for several election cycles. From those examples, she says it’s been possible to learn what works and what doesn’t.

She favors a program that would provide state funding to match small donations, $175 or less, by a six-to-one margin.

“If someone gives you $10, it turns into $70,” Wisneski said. “And you fuel your campaign this way, instead of having to go to Albany fundraisers.”  

Wisneski credits Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo for putting the proposal into his state budget plan.

In past years, Republicans controlled the State Senate, and were resistant to public campaign financing, saying that taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for political campaigns.

In 2018, several new Democrats were elected to the Senate, and the party now holds the majority, giving Democrats control of the Senate, the Assembly and the governor’s office. Many of the freshman Senators refused to take corporate donations, and their campaigns were funded by smaller donations.  Rivera says there’s a “core group” of Assembly Democrats who are also backing public financing. But she says she and other advocates are aware that there is some resistance to changing a system that’s worked well for many long-term incumbent lawmakers of both parties.  

“I don’t think we want to jinx ourselves, but we’re in the best position at this point for this to happen,” said Rivera. “With the triple blue that we have, we really believe that if there’s the political will, we can get this done.”  

Rivera and Wisneski say they know that even with the reforms, they can’t take money out of politics completely, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. It said the government could not restrict independent expenditure committees from spending unlimited amounts of money on political issue advertising campaigns. 

“Unfortunately, where we are at with Supreme Court, we’re never going to completely get rid of money in politics,” Wisneski said.  

She and other advocates say they are glad that the governor and legislature took a first step recently, and closed a campaign finance loophole that allowed corporate donors to skirt limits by forming multiple limited liability companies, or LLCs. But they say it’s not enough.

Karen DeWitt is Capitol Bureau chief for New York State Public Radio, a network of public radio stations in New York state. She has covered state government and politics for the network since 1990.
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