The political calendar for 2025 is upon us and activities are picking up. There’s still some 2024 business, however, that needs attention.
Following the lead of New York City, the State of New York in 2024 began its program for public campaign financing. Candidates for the State Legislature were eligible for campaign matching funds based on criteria set up by the enabling legislation. Qualifying candidates were required to:
- Have an opponent
- Meet requirements for the number of contributions received from individuals within their districts for donations of between $5 and $250
- Keep detailed records of the contributions presented for matching funds
- Submit reports to the new Public Campaign Financing Board (PCFB) on their receipts and expenditures, which qualified them for the state funds
Originally more than 300 candidates indicated that they would participate. At the conclusion of the 2024 elections, however, only 192 received state money. The total amount allocated to the candidates was approximately $35 million.
The Program was developed, as noted in the enabling legislation, with the purposes of:
“reducing voter apathy, building confidence in government, reducing the reality and appearance of corruption, and encouraging qualified candidates to run for office, while reducing candidates’ and officeholders’ fundraising burdens.”
The Brennan Center for Justice was a major advocate for public campaign financing in New York State. A recent report from the Center offered its assessment of New York’s new law. It’s conclusions:
- Candidates relied much more on small donations from constituents. The program has made in-district contributions of $250 or less a central component of fundraising. These donations leaped from less than 5 percent of overall funding in recent cycles to 45 percent in the last cycle when factoring in matching funds. Large donations of $1,000 or more and money from entities such as PACs and corporations (which often come from outside candidates’ districts) decreased from 70 and 72 percent of candidates’ funding in 2020 and 2022, respectively, to 38 percent in 2024.
- Small donors’ participation boomed. An estimated 50,800 New Yorkers made small-dollar in-district donations — about twice as many as in 2020 or 2022.
- Independent expenditures did not negate the program’s benefits. Spending by super PACs and similar entities, which was concentrated in just 10 percent of legislative districts, did not impede publicly financed candidates from running viable campaigns.
The local experience
Eleven state legislative candidates in districts based in Erie and Nagara Counties received public funding, collectively totaling $1.3 million. It appears that state money only had a serious impact on the outcome in one district, the 143rd Assembly District. Incumbent Democrat Monica Wallace, despite strong party affiliation numbers in her favor, was defeated by Republican Pat Chludzinski. Chludzinski received the maximum amount of state money, $175,000. Wallace did not participate in the public campaign financing program.
Here are the other ten local recipients of state money:
- Both the Democratic and Republican candidates in 63rd Senate District received state cash but Democrat April Baskin won handily. Baskin received $205,610, while Jack Moretti collected $96,155.
- Republican Jack Priore received $175,000 in the 142nd District but lost narrowly to incumbent Democrat Pat Burke who cashed $93,030 from the state.
- 145th Assembly District incumbent Republican Angelo Morinello ($99,868 in state money) handily defeated Jeffrey Elder, who got $68,518 in state money.
- One Assembly candidate in the 147th Assembly District, Republican Mitch Martin, lost his primary by a considerable margin. Martin received $91,138.
- Democrat Michelle Roman received $89,475 in the 144th District but lost by a wide margin.
- Democrat Darci Cramer received $109,463 but lost by a wide margin to incumbent Assemblyman David DiPietro in the 147th District.
- Republican Christine Czarnik received $111,865 in her race against incumbent Sean Ryan in the 61st Senate District, losing to Ryan by a large margin.
Here’s the quick and dirty analysis of these races and the involvement of state money: in all but one (Assembly 143rd) of the races the state money had little impact on the results. It can be argued that party registration and incumbency had more to do with the election outcomes than the contributions from state taxpayers.
Audits
The Center makes some valid observations and describes the Program as “a wise investment in strengthening representation and civic participation.” Maybe that is correct, but we really do not have enough information about how everything worked out in practice to come to a final conclusion about the program’s success or lack thereof.
Last spring, when the Program was just getting off the ground, the New York Times did an investigation into the receipt and use of state public funds by one particular Assembly candidate in New York City. It found that donor records were falsified with claims of contributions from people who did not contribute or did not live in the district. “Straw donors” were involved. A straw donor is someone who uses another person’s money illegally to donor to a campaign in their own name.
Straw donor schemes have been observed in New York City’s version of public campaign financing. Some people involved in Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign committee have been indicted for such actions.
Another avenue for potential investigation would be the expenses of a campaign possibly involving any connection between a candidate and his/her consultants and vendors; or the landlord who received rent payments for a headquarters financed with state money.
The law that established the state Program provides for after-the-fact audits of payments provided to certain candidates. The PCFB has created a lottery system to determine which of the 192 candidate committees that received public funding in 2024 will be audited. How thorough such audits will be remains to be seen.
Only a third or less of the candidate committees that received state money in 2024 will be audited, with no serious criteria being used to select audit targets. So two-thirds of 2024 recipients have nothing to worry about no matter how well or poorly they followed the law.
No local candidates will have their receipt and use of state money audited.
There is, of course, the possibility that others in the media might follow the New York Times example and do some digging into the use of these public funds. Given the diminished state of many news outlets these days, such efforts are likely to be very rare.
A wise investment?
While the Brennan Center found reasons to be optimistic about the program, the audit and newspaper findings suggest that more experience coupled with increased scrutiny, from official audits and the free press, is required to perhaps refine the program before a final determination of success can be made.
Twitter/X @kenkruly
Bluesky @kenkruly
Threads kenkruly
