Hawkins for Auditor

Howie Hawkins Statement on Cuomo's Call to Finish the Job on Campaign Finance Reform

Governor Cuomo's statement today to New Yorkers on public campaign finance reform admits defeat as he claims to champion reform: "We may not be able to shut off the spigot of money into the system."

The Governor should be calling call for full public campaign financing and an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to permit effective public regulation of election financing.

To finish the job properly, the Governor should support the Clean Money Elections bill in the state legislature (A4116-2013, S4501-2013), which sets up a system of full public campaign financing like Arizona and Maine have. Candidates would either opt in to running entirely with an equal state grant of Clean Money or opt out to run on private Dirty Money. That would level the field for Clean Money candidates and expose the Dirty Money candidates.

The partial funding system promoted by the Governor provides a limited amount of public matching funds while permitting unlimited private financing. It just adds a little public money to camouflage the same old system of legalized bribery dominated by millionaire and billionaire donors. Support for the plutocracy rather than true democracy.

We can eliminate the private Dirty Money system by amending the U.S. Constitution. The Governor could call on Congress to enact House Joint Resolution 29, the We The People Amendment, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would establish that only human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights, including the right to vote, and that money is property, not protected speech. This amendment would repeal the Buckley v. Valeo, Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have opened the gates for the flood of private money that is allowing a tiny rich elite to buy our elections and our government.

Cuomo won't call for that constitutional amendment. My campaign does.

Cuomo won't call for a full Clean Money system of public financing. My campaign does.