The campaign against reform
Count us not surprised that there are voices heard but not seen in the Legislature grumbling about the state’s new public campaign finance matching program, with much of the grumbling supposedly emanating from the Assembly seeking to delay its implementation. And it’s especially galling that the excuse being proffered is that the Assembly will be redistricted for next year’s elections, making it an inopportune time to begin the matching fund system empowering challengers.
It is true that the current Assembly of 150 members have districts that were created in violation of the state Constitution and must be redrawn to bring them into compliance and this column is pleased to have urged for that successful lawsuit to have been brought. However, last year’s initial maps for Congress and state Senate were also rotten and those were all redrawn by the courts before last November’s vote.
Yet Speaker Carl Heastie fought very hard to keep his unconstitutional lines in place even after the courts had ruled the maps void. Congressional and senatorial candidates had to scramble with new maps, while Heastie’s members sat secure in their familiar constituencies, hand drawn by Heastie and GOP leader Will Barclay.
So using the excuse of new districts to delay the matching program mustn’t fly.
It wasn’t an accident that last session the Senate passed a slew of election reform bills and not one of the measures so much as even had a vote in the Assembly.
What won’t be delayed is that the obscenely high limits on Albany campaign contributions were finally lowered on Nov. 9, 2022 (a day after Election Day). The max for statewide contenders fell from $69,700 to $18,000; for Senate candidates it dipped from $19,300 to $10,000 and for Assembly the drop was from $9,400 to $6,000. Better, but still high. Compare those numbers to the most that someone can give to a federal candidate for Congress or president of $6,600, up from $5,800.
Albany has a long way to get clean. Delaying the matching program will help it stay dirty.