New York State already has an election dollar matching program using tax payer funds and now Governor Hochul and Democrats in the state legislature want to give even more of your money to political campaigns.
The public finance campaign system was first used in the 2024 election cycle doling out $34 million to candidates in 2024. Changes would allow candidates to match the first $250 of donations up to $1,000. Current rules allow matching of just the first $250 at a 6-to-1 rate for statewide elections.
They also want to allow candidates to keep $50,000 for future campaigns rolling them over giving a head start for the next campaign cycle before they pay back any surplus funds back to the taxpayer. The second rub is that the politicians want to be able to transfer funds to other political committees also prior to paying back any surplus funds.
Opposition to these changes and uses of taxpayer money are not hard to find. There are worries that raising the matching fund limits opens the doors for influence from larger donors even more than we have now.
Watchdog group Reinvent Albany said, “This proposal is truly dismal example of Albany at its worst.”
“I think you’re going to find people on the left and right equally upset about these likely changes to the state public finance system. Those on the left will see it as undermining the original intentions of the program. Those on the right are philosophically opposed to taxpayer funded elections and believe these changes prove that the program was never anything more than a welfare program for politicians,” said Joe Burns elections law expert and partner at Holtzman Vogel.
New York State Conservative Party Chairman Gerry Kassar said, “The slippery slope of increased taxpayer funding of political campaigns in New York was warned about by the Conservative Party from the moment we saw its woke head emerge from behind a plethora of academic fueled theories. How about allowing New Yorkers the opportunity to only spend their earnings on candidates that they support?”
Burns added, “The public campaign finance board’s audit of the 2024 election isn’t even finished. Why wouldn’t the governor and state legislature wait for that to be completed before they go tinkering with the program? It makes you think these changes are about something other than "good government."
Currently, Assembly candidates must raise at least $6,000 from at least 75 people in their district to qualify and state Senate candidates must raise $12,000 from at least 150 district residents. Democrats in the legislature are also considering changing these limits.
Analysis of the first year this program was available, the 2024 election cycle, has not even been completed. Many thing that at the very least a report on year one should be available and analyzed before changes are made