Cashed Out: Despite a commitment from Cuomo, public campaign financing faces long odds

In a hastily put together video to accept the Working Families Party endorsement, Gov. Andrew Cuomo laid out a list of the progressive issues he said the state Legislature must act on before lawmakers adjourn for the year on June 19. 

Amid the litany of priorities was a brief mention of the governor’s “strong” public campaign finance reform bill. 

While the video was used to try to spur action in the state Senate on key issues like public campaign financing, the full women’s equality agenda and a higher minimum wage, which bills will actually inch forward in the final two weeks of the session remains to be seen. In the case of public campaign financing, the issue appears to be locked in political purgatory until debate kicks up again in the 2015 legislative session. 

Members of both major parties have not expressed much optimism that the issue will reach Cuomo’s desk before the session ends. Leaders from both mainline Senate conferences have addressed the subject with a similar sentiment: We’ll see what happens next year. 

“We always continue discussions,” Senate Majority Co-Leader Dean Skelos, a Republican, told a gaggle of reporters recently, “but most of the controversial things will be brought up next year when we have a majority of 34 or 35.” 

Senate Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins also looked ahead, saying: “We’ll see if it can get done in the next two weeks. If not, then obviously the Senate Democratic majority in January will be pushing for this to happen.” 

As for the Senate Majority’s other co-leader, Democrat Jeff Klein, a spokesperson said campaign finance reform remains one of the senator’s top priorities for the rest of the session. 

It appears that the little differences have become ravines between the two sides. To Stewart-Cousins, the holdup is an ideological difference on campaign finance reform between a majority of the Democratic Conference and a majority of Republicans, she said. 

Part of bridging that gap is securing the votes necessary to expand and refine the public financing pilot program enacted earlier this year, which currently applies only to the office of state comptroller in this election cycle. Even if the IDC were to break from the majority coalition on this issue and use all five of its votes to support the passage of some sort of reform, the Democrats presumably still wouldn’t have the 32 votes needed for a majority. They would have 31 votes, if the nonaligned Democrats vote with them. That’s because they don’t have full mainline Democratic support. State Sen. Rubén Díaz Sr. has been an outspoken critic of the current proposals, and state Sen. Simcha Felder caucuses with the Republicans, voting with them on many issues. 

At least one Democratic senator questioned why the votes wouldn’t be there, saying that all legislators can get behind campaign finance reform. 

“Why does it matter who controls the legislative agenda?” state Sen. Liz Krueger said at a press conference last week. “Because everybody can say they’re for this, they’re for that ... until bills come to the floor and people actually get to see did you vote for it? Did you vote against it? ... You don’t know where your legislator actually stands so we have a fabulous way of using smoke and mirrors to say one thing and do another thing in Albany and that’s all tied into our campaign reform rules or our failure to deliver those bills.” 

Cuomo has raised the stakes by putting pressure on the majority coalition, specifically Republicans, to get something done or else— especially with Klein pledging his full support for campaign finance reform. In his Working Families Party video, Cuomo called for the ousting of the majority coalition if they fail to deliver on progressive issues. Just days before the endorsement, Cuomo described campaign finance reform as his litmus test for the majority, warning that if the coalition fails, he would consider it a failure— and “act accordingly.” 

If Skelos’ cool and collected comments are any indication of his conference’s reaction to Cuomo’s newly combative tone, Republicans aren’t overly worried. He said Cuomo went “a bit far” in the promises made to the third party, which Skelos called counterproductive to efforts to create private sector jobs and cut taxes, but he said he didn’t feel betrayed by the governor. There will be many issues to be worked on as the session draws to a close, he said. 

“The governor indicated that politics would start [June] 20, the day after we are adjourning,” Skelos said. “Obviously, he accelerated that by three weeks.” 

If discussions are tabled until the 2015 session, the state comptroller’s race this fall could set the tone for next year’s debate. Criticized by some as a campaign finance measure designed to fail, the pilot program pertaining to the comptroller’s race authorized public matching funds for personal contributions at a 6-to-1 ratio, mirroring New York City’s Campaign Finance Board System. State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has opted out of the program publicly denouncing the pilot as poorly conceived and containing loopholes. But Republican candidate Robert Antonacci, in a break from his party’s general stance toward the public financing of elections, did opt in. 

“We didn’t anticipate self-funding a campaign,” he said when announcing his run in May. “I am very proud that I will participate in the taxpayer funded program.” 

Additional reporting by Paulina Tam